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lliam Winwood, 1838 


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The martyrdom of man 


HENRY 
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BUCHER 
JR 


1972 





Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/martyrdomofmanOOread_0 


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THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN 


PUBLISHERS’ NOTE 


Tue Martyrpom or Man was first published in 1872 
and this edition is a reprint of the twenty-fourth Eng- 
lish edition with an Introduction by fF’. Legge. The 
references to mechanical inventions and scientific dis- 
covery on pages XL, XLI, and elsewhere should be read 
in the light of these dates. It is interesting to note how 
far Winwood Reade’s predictions have been justified by 
events. 


THE MARTYRDOM 
OF MAN 


BY 


WINWOOD READE 


NEW AMERICAN EDITION 





NEW YORK 


Bebe DoUITrON, & COMBANY 


681 FIFTH AVENUE 


PusiisHEp, 1926 


By E. P. Dutron & COMPANY 


All Rights Reserved 


Printed IN THE Unitep States oF AMERICA 


INTRODUCTION 


Wiiu1am Winwoop Reape was born at Murrayfield 
near Crieff on the 26th December 1838, of a 
family distinguished in the annals of the Civil and 
Military Services of the Honourable East India Com- 
pany, and was the eldest son of William Barrington. 
Reade of Ipsden House, Oxfordshire, a considerable 
landowner whose younger brother was Charles Reade, 
the author of The Cloister and the Hearth and of many 
other famous novels and successful plays. Winwood 
Reade’s mother was Elizabeth, the daughter of Captain 
John Murray, R.N., herself the inheritrix of an estate 
in Scotland, and she survived him by many years, as 
did his five brothers. He was educated first at Henley 
Grammar School and afterwards by Dr Behr at Hyde 
House, Winchester, and on the 13th March 1856 matric- 
ulated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, not then known by 
its revived name of Hertford College. The Hall was 
then of no great reputation, and Reade did not bring 
to it the mental discipline that he might have acquired 
at one of the great public schools, at that time rough 
but efficient nurseries of manners. If his own novel 
of Inberty Hall be taken as an autobiography of this 
part of his career, it would seem that he fell at Oxford 
into a somewhat dissipated set, and acquired there 
habits which were to stand him in bad stead in after 
life. On leaving the University without a degree, he at 

*The Dictionary of National Biography (s.h.n.) says the 30th 


January 1838; but this is plainly a mistake. Cf. Burke’s Landed 
Geniry (current edition), p. 1408. 


lil 


a INTRODUCTION 


first resolved on a literary career, the success of his 
uncle, just then risen to fame as a playwright and 
novelist, doubtless appearing before him as a shining 
example. In 1859, he published a short sketch called 
Charlotte and Myra, narrating the misadventures of 
a young gentleman who, after proposing to and being 
accepted by one of the twin daughters of a country 
squire, afterwards confuses her with her sister, and 
thereby exposes himself to a breach of promise action 
which ruins him. The story is wildly improbable, but 
is told with some spirit, the desire of a very young man 
—he was then not twenty-one—to show his acquaintance 
with the world and its dissipations being apparent on 
every page. This was followed the next year by Liberty 
Hall, Oxon, a novel in the then orthodox three volumes, 
in which Reade sets himself to describe at sufficient 
length the lives of a group of University men, who 
can hardly be any other than himself and his com- 
panions, as they appeared to his youthful eyes, and 
as he thought they were likely to end. Here we have 
the well-known types of the rowing man, the lady- 
killer, and the undergraduate who has held a commis- 
sion in the Army for a short time, and is therefore 
much looked up to by his contemporaries for his 
superior knowledge of life. There also appear in these 
pages the drunkard and the gambler, and it is sig- 
nificant of the bent of Reade’s mind at this period 
that none of his characters come to much good, while 
he indulges in many diatribes against the extravagance 
of the University life of the time, the facilities it of- 
fered to undergraduates for getting into debt with the 
disabilities that this imposes upon them in after life, 
and the useless and perfunctory character of the studies 
forced upon them. In the course of this book, the 
author describes his initiation into Freemasonry, and 
this probably led him to produce, the year after the 
publication of Liberty Hall, The Veil of Isis, a work in 


INTRODUCTION Vv 


which he first showed signs of the anti-clerical tendency 
which was to give so much colour to the speculations 
of his maturer years. In form, The Veil of Ists is & 
history of the Druids, to compile which the author 
raked together, without much exercise of the critical 
faculty, all the scanty information to be gathered from 
classical writers such as Cesar, Tacitus, and Ammianus 
Marcellinus: but its real purpose is probably shown 
in the Fourth Book, in which he states his conviction 
that the leading principles of Druidism have been con- 
tinued and survive in the ceremonials and ritual of 
Freemasonry. With this he thought fit to couple much 
abuse of the High Church party in the Church of 
England, whom he described in words sounding oddly 
enough to modern ears, as—‘‘false vipers who, warmed 
and cherished in the bosom of this gentle church, use 
their increasing strength in darting black poison through 
all her veins. They wish to transmit to our church 
those papist emblems and imagery, those ceremonies 
and customs which are harmless in themselves, but 
which by nourishing superstition elevate the dangerous 
power of the priests.” 

These three works were all very badly received by 
the Press, the leading literary journals being especially 
severe upon what they considered the author’s insolence 
of tone, and have long since become extinct; but events 
were now beginning to take shape which were destined 
to give a totally different turn to the remainder of 
Reade’s short life. In 1859, Darwin had published his 
Origin of Species, and the doctrine contained in it soon 
began to filter through from the learned to the general 
public. Among the many misrepresentations of it then 
current was the statement unwarrantably put into Dar- 
win’s mouth, that man was descended from the anthro- 
poid apes; and, while the excitement produced by this 
was at its height, Paul Du Chaillu, a Frenchman domi- 
ciled in America, exhibited in London three stuffed speci- 


vi INTRODUCTION 


mens of the gorilla, which he described as a newly 
discovered anthropoid ape of great ferocity and intelli- 
gence living in the forests bordering on the Gaboon. 
“Rattening,” then as now, was by no means unknown 
in scientific circles, and the narrative of Du Chaillu, 
who was not fortified by any academic credentials or 
by the prestige which in England seems to attach to 
those engaged in the-instruction of youth, was at once 
assailed as a tissue of impossible lies, Dr Gray, Assistant 
Keeper of the Zoological Department of the British 
Museum, leading off in May 1861 with letters to the 
newspapers headed “New Traveller’s Tales.” Yet Du 
Chaillu found some defenders, including the late Prof. 
Owen; and “Reade, whose tastes had early led him to 
the study of natural science, and in whose veins ran the 
blood of many who had sought fortune overseas, con- 
ceived the idea of visiting the Gaboon and deciding the 
controversy for himself. In pursuance of this he raised 
money on his inheritance,* and started for Western 
Africa in December 1862, on board the s.s. Armenian, 
belonging to the African Steamship Company. His first 
visit was to Fernando Po where Captain, afterwards 
Sir Richard Burton was H.M.’s Consul,/The visit must 
have been an interesting one and formed the beginning 
of a lifelong friendship; and it was here that Reade had 
his first touch of fever. But a fortnight later, he sailed 
down the coast in a trading vessel and landed at Glass- 
town, where he was rewarded by the sight of a tame 
gorilla.” From thence, he went up the Ncomo or Upper 
-Gabogn. with only native attendants, and succeeded in 
penetrating as far as the Rapids, then unknown to Euro- 

*See obituary notice in Daily Telegraph, 27th April 1875. The 
notice is said to have been written by Charles Reade. As Reade 
himself says later (African Sketch Book, London, 1873, ii. p. 331) 
that in 1861 money was burning in his pocket, it is probable that 


it was raised for other purposes. 
* African Sketch Book, vol. i. p. 19. 


INTRODUCTION vii 


peans. Then, hearing that Du Chaillu had visited the 
Fernand Vaz or Camma country, he transferred himself 
to the latter river, where he remained for some time in a 
kind of honourable captivity as the guest of Quenqueza, 
King of the Rembo. He also learned that Du Chaillu’s 
account of the habits of the gorilla, though not inaccu- 


rate in the main, was entirely derived from native | 
sources, the French explorer having visited the coast | 
merely as a trader and having bought the gorilla skins | 
that he exhibited from native hunters, while his alleged | 
personal encounters with the animal were ‘“‘written up” | 
from his notes by a New York journalist. Returning | 


to the coast, Reade visited the Congo, which he ascended 
for a hundred and fifty miles, and although here he only 
followed in the footsteps of Livingstone, he was one of 
the first of modern writers to describe the Portuguese 
city of San Paolo de Loanda and the island of San 
Thomé, which hag lately attained notoriety for its ex- 
port of slave-grown cocoa. Then he ascended the Case- 
manche river as far as Sedhu, only returning to take 
passage for Bathurst, whence he visited the Falls of 
Barraconda, and then went back to the coast and up 
the Senegal. In these last-named journeys, he studied 
the Slave Trade at close quarters, and even made the 
voyage to Loanda in a Portuguese slave-ship which was 
stopped and searched by a British cruiser. At the time, 
he was hardly twenty-four years old, entirely dependent 
on his own resources, and had no knowledge of any 
African language or even of Arabic, although he man- 
aged to acquire some acquaintance with Portuguese en 
route. In the unexplored countries that he visited, 
moreover, he went practically unarmed, only having, as 
he tells us, a large unloaded duck-gun borne behind him 
“as an emblem of dignity and power.” Nor does he seem 
to have had any previous advice on his equipment or 
conduct before leaving England except from the sur- 
geon on one of the mail steamers to West Africa whom 


Vili INTRODUCTION 


he met in England in the autumn of 1861, and whose 
conversation * first suggested to him the idea of explora- 
tion. In one respect he paid dearly for his inexperience: 
for, by his own confession, he sometimes gave way to 
intemperance on this trip, and thus probably laid the 
foundation of the many fevers and other illnesses which 
were to prematurely cut short his career. Yet, when all 
is said, the feat was one worthy to rank with those of 
much more renowned travellers, and has never received 
half the credit it deserves. 

On his return to England at the end of 1863, Reade 
published an account of his travels under the title 
Savage Africa; and then, having determined, rightly 
enough, that a knowledge of medicine was one of the 
most important aids to an explorer of savage countries, 
he set himself to acquire this by entering as a student 
at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. Here he remained 
three years, went through the usual course, and on the 
outbreak of the cholera epidemic in the autumn of 
1866, volunteered for and received the charge of the 
cholera hospital established at Southampton. In the 
meantime, he continued to pay attention to literature, 
a novel called See-Saw written by him under the pseu- 
donym of “Francesco Abati” having appeared in 1865. 
This recounts the adventures of a prima donna married 
first to a middle-aged English man of business, but 
afterwards returning to her first love in the person of 
an Italian Count of long descent and much wealth who 
is, Somewhat incongruously, a virtuoso and composer; 
and its scene is chiefly laid in Florence. Its object— 
for Reade, like his uncle, never wrote other than 
romans @ clef—seems to have been to contrast the 
simplicity and earnestness of the Roman Catholic faith, 
as professed by the lower orders in Latin countries, with 
the hypocrisy and bitterness current among the more 


* African Sketch Book, pp. i. sqaq. 
? Savage Africa, pp. 281, 339, 349, 505, etc. 


INTRODUCTION ix 


Puritanical English sects. It would therefore seem that 
Reade at this period passed some time in Italy, and that 
what he saw there induced him to modify his youthful 
views with regard to the inbred wickedness of Catholi- 
cism. Perhaps it was some idea of the way in which 
the public of the period would be likely to regard this 
palinode, which led him to adopt the very thin disguise 
with which he thought to cover the authorship of the 
novel. According to his own statements, however, it 
fell as flat as the others, and created only the most 
momentary sensation. As he himself says a little later,’ 
“my books are literary insects, doomed to a trifling and 
ephemeral existence, to buzz and hum for a season— 
and to die.” 

This failure, as he chose to consider it, seems to have 
entered like iron into a soul ever greedy for personal 
distinction, and Reade’s mind began to turn again to 
the pursuit of fame as an explorer. In his own words, 
he reflected that: “it is a curse to aspire and never 
to attain. To-morrow I shall be thirty years old. For 
more than ten years I have been writing and writing, 
and yet have done nothing, absolutely nothing, and at 
length am learning the unpalatable truth that my fate 
is Mediocrity.” 

In these circumstances, it is no wonder that he “be- 
gan to hunger after Africa again,” and thirsted to leave 
“a red line of his own upon the map.” With this view, 
he besieged all the business men dealing with the West 
Coast of Africa with offers of his services as an agent, in- 
tending, as he says, “to remain for a time patiently 
upon the Coast, making natural history collections, 
studying the native languages and customs, and to wait 
an opportunity of plunging into the interior.” Perhaps 
it was because Reade had neither business training nor 
had given any signs of capacity for it—or perhaps the 


1 African Sketch Book, vol. ii. p. 364. 
? Ibid., ii. pp. 363, 364. * Tbid., ii. p. 352. 


x INTRODUCTION 


firms to which he applied not unnaturally distrusted a 
subordinate who did not disguise his intention of using 
their service as a stepping-stone—but they one and all 
declined the offer of his services, until the Secretary of 
the Royal Geographical Society thought of introducing 
him to Mr Andrew Swanzy, the head of an important 
firm then trading with the Gold Coast. Mr Swanzy was 
opposed to Reade in politics* at a time when politics 
made a more complete dichotomy of society than at 
present, but he had for some time meditated doing 
something for the cause of African exploration, and 
had even dreamed of making a visit in person to Da- 
homey and of impressing upon its king the advisability 
of adopting ‘‘a better, fairer, and a more beneficial sys- 
tem of trading and even of governing his people.” * 
These schemes for the political reform of the most sav- 
age state in Africa were hardly likely to come to 
fruition, but he recognized in Reade a kindred spirit, 
and finally offered to bear the expense of a second 
journey of exploration by Reade to the West Coast, 
giving him in his own words “carte blanche to go where 
I please in this country, to stay as long as I please, and 
to spend as much money as I please.’”’ The expedition 
was placed under the control of the Royal Geographical 
Society’s Council, and Reade started again on a journey 
to Africa in the autumn of 1868. 

This second expedition “in search,” as he described 
it, “of a reputation,” all but cost him his life. He went 
first to Sierra Leone, where he remained for some 
months, studying the route to be taken, and making 
trips to the Slave and Gold Coasts. He at one time 
thought of exploring the Sherboro River, then of pene- 


*'He was Liberal candidate for West Kent at the General Elec- 
tk of 1874, while Reade was a member of the Conservative 
lub. 

*See his letter to Reade of 12th June 1871, given in African 
Sketch Book, vol. ii. p. 509. 

* African Sketch Book, vol. ii. p. 349. 


INTRODUCTION Xi 


trating to Coomassie or to Dahomey. He cams to the 
conclusion, however, that the chance of reaching either 
of these capitals was too slight to be worth the enormous 
expense involved, while the journey up the Sherboro, 
where Jules Gerard the lion-hunter was killed, would 
add little to our geographical knowledge. Finally, he 
decided to push through from Freetown to Falaba, the 
capital of the military kingdom of Sulimania discovered 
by Major Laing in 1825, and thence to make a bid for 
the sources of the Niger. This plan was much encour- 
aged by Sir Arthur Kennedy, then Governor of West 
Africa, who visited Freetown during Reade’s stay, and 
was anxious to get the trade route to Falaba reopened; 
but it is curious to note that Reade conceived his first 
idea, of the expedition from Major Laing’s Travels, pub- 
lished by Murray in 1825, a copy of which he found in 
a disused cupboard in the Government interpreter’s 
house at Freetown. Reade tells us that he had studied 
the geography of West Africa ever since his former 
visit, and had read nearly every book upon it extant; 
but that, till then, he knew Laing’s work only by name.* 
It is odd that he should thus have missed a book to be 
found in the British Museum and no doubt in other 
places of the kind, and of such interest to him that, 
after its first perusal, he was unable to sleep. It con- 
vinced him, as he tells us, that the Niger is “close to 
Sierra Leone’; and on Major Laing’s map its source is 
actually marked as rising near Mount Loma on the 
borders of the Kissi and Koranko countries. This was 
confirmed by some negro headmen or “landlords”? who 
had assembled at Freetown to meet Sir Arthur Kennedy, 
and determined Reade to reach this source or die in the 
attempt. 

At last all his preparations were complete, and he 
started from Port Loko, the headquarters of the Timni 
nation or tribe, with all the prestige that could be con- 


1 African Sketch Book, vol. i. p. 369. 


xii INTRODUCTION 


ferred by the active support of the Government. He 
took with him a number of the medals usually given to 
native chiefs in alliance with Sierra Leone, and one of 
his men was dressed in a uniform which gave the expe- 
dition the rank of a Government mission. Two in- 
terpreters, a guide, a special Timni emissary from Port 
Loko, and a great train of carriers accompanied the 
expedition; but it was characteristic of Reade that he 
took with him no provisions for himself, no medicines 
but a small quantity of quinine and chlorodyne, and that 
the only firearms to be found in the convoy were a 
breechloading carbine and a few cartridges carried by 
himself. With these, he traversed the Timni country, 
crossed the Little Scarcies River, and entered the coun- 
try of the Limbas, where his troubles began. The 
medals removed some difficulties caused by his Timni 
escort, who were plainly ill-affected to the expedition; 
but he discovered that a small subsidy paid to the 
Limba town of “Big Boumba” (Boumbadi) for the free 
passage of gold caravans to Sierra Leone had been al- 
lowed to lapse, and he was only allowed to go forward 
on promising to send back from Falaba a Limba mes- 
senger for the arrears. On leaving the Limba country, 
Reade sent back his Timni escort and carriers, who 
had done little but make trouble, and touched Major 
Laing’s route by crossing a limb of the country of 
Koranko which here interposes between that of the 
Limbas and the kingdom of Sulimania. This over, he 
entered what he calls the Great Central African Pla- 
teau, a high tableland separated from the coast by the 
wood-covered hills through which he had just struggled. 
Before very long he reached the great town of Falaba 
and was well received by Sewa, king of the Sulimas. 
In three months, he had successfully accomplished the 


* He explains in one place (op. cit. p. 376) that the Timni chiefs 
were at no time in favour of the expedition, no doubt having 
reasons of their own for not wishing direct trade with Falaba to 
be resumed. 


INTRODUCTION xiii 


first part of his journey, and had opened, as the Gov- 
ernment wished, the direct trade route from Sierra 
Leone to Falaba. 

It was here that the expedition nearly terminated in 
the death of Reade. He had sent back, according to 
promise, the Limba envoy—one Linseni—with a request 
for the arrears of the subsidy immediately upon reach- 
ing Falaba, together with all the carriers remaining of 
those who had accompanied him from Sierra Leone. 
He had trusted neither of the interpreters who remained 
with him with the real object of his journey until he 
reached Falaba, of which town one of them was 
formerly a citizen. Hence when he told them that he 
wished to push on to the source of the Joliba or Great 
River—as the Niger is there called—they advised him 
that his best course was to say nothing about it to 
the king of the country for at least a month. When, at 
last, the revelation was made to Sewa, that worthy 
answered in the true African style that he was then at 
war with a tribe of revolted Foulas called the Hooboes, 
but that, when the country was quiet, the white man 
should go and look at the water of the Great River. 
The excuse was more than a mere pretext, as was shown 
by the appearance and execution of Foula prisoners in 
Falaba; but it soon became plain that Sewa intended to 
keep Reade in his town as long as possible, and at all 
events until his goods, which are the money of the 
country, were exhausted. The disappointment was bit- 
ter to Reade, who reflected that so far he had penetrated 
no further than Major Laing, and doubtless had much 
to do with the illness which followed. First he was 
attacked by dysentery, but recovered by returning to a 
meat diet, then by small-pox, which also prostrated the 
body-servant whom he had brought with him from the 
Coast: and during these troubles he discovered that he 
was really a prisoner, and that Sewa would neither let 
him go forward to the Joliba nor return to Sierra 


XIV INTRODUCTION 


Leone, at any rate until his fast-dwindling stores were 
exhausted. At last, having sent away one of his two 
interpreters with a letter for Sir Arthur Kennedy, he 
was again attacked by malarial fever. “I am now con- 
fined to my hut,” he writes at this period; * “all strength 
is gone from me. I never see my face, for I have no 
looking-glass; but my hand, as I write, startles me—it 
looks wasted and old. But my spirit is not subdued. 
If it is death which is approaching, it will find me 
prepared. When I came to this country a second time 
I knew that the chances were even against my return. 
What does it matter after all? Life at the longest is 
not so very long.” But while he was writing these 
lines, Linseni, the native whom he had sent to Sierra 
Leone on his first arrival at Falaba, returned. He had 
been instructed by the Governor to escort Reade to the 
Coast, and Sewa who desired the English trade, luckily 
interpreted this as an order to himself to release his 
prisoner. ‘Three days later, Reade started for Freetown. 

On his sufferings in this return journey, there is no 
occasion to dwell. Unable to walk, he had to be car- 
ried in a hammock the greater part of the way, but on 
arriving at Mabile, he managed to obtain a canoe, and 
travelled through most of the Timnis’ country by water. 
Moreover, the Governor had on his advice paid the 
arrears of subsidy due to the Limbas, and the fame of 
this, and perhaps the presence of a nephew of Sewa’s 
who accompanied him, prevented the natives from 
molesting him on the road. On arriving at Freetown, 
the Government paid all the expenses of his journey and 
entered into an arrangement with Sewa’s emissary by 
which the King of Sulimania was to receive a small 
annual payment so long as the road to Falaba was 
open. This has since been faithfully observed, and 
Falaba is now the centre of a flourishing trade. The 
five months that had elapsed since he first left Free- 


* African Sketch Book, vol. ii. p. 449. 


INTRODUCTION XV 


town had not therefore been ill-spent, and all his friends 
advised him to remain there and recruit his shattered 
health: yet in a fortnight’s time he was again on the 
now opened road to Falaba, having decided to return 
with Sewa’s envoy. The fear that another expedition 
might be dispatched by the Government during his 
convalescence seems to have been the moving cause of 
his thus risking his life a second time, and the surgeon 
in charge of the Colony told the Governor that he would 
certainly die on the road. But Reade was not to be 
turned back, and the Governor did what he could for 
him by stipulating with Sewa that he should be allowed 
to pass through Falaba to the Niger, an agreement which 
was rigidly kept. Probably Reade was right in not 
allowing Sewa sufficient time for his gratitude to 
evaporate. 

This time there were no difficulties, although it was 
now the rainy season, when the bush is supposed to be 
impossible. for Europeans. Falaba was reached with- 
out hindrance, and here Reade was able, for the first 
time since he left it, as he says, “to put on his boots’ 
and walk. Taking Sewa’s envoy with him, he pressed 
on, and struck the Niger at Farabana where it is but 
100 yards wide, and where he narrowly escaped again 
being detained as a prisoner. He also ascertained’ that 


1 African Sketch Book, vol. ii. p. 471. This was confirmed ten 
years later by MM. Zweifel and Moustier, the agents on the 
Coast of M. Verminck of Marseilles, who undertook to bear the 
expenses of a voyage of discovery undertaken by them in 1879. 
They found the fame of Reade still fresh in the country, and that 
the Niger—there called the Tembi—issued from a hill on which 
was a great hollow tree, afterwards passing through a small lake 
(Bulletin de la Société de Geographie, Paris, 1881, pp. 97 sqq.). 
This exactly agrees with the account given by Reade in the 
African Sketch Book (ii. p. 506). A photograph of the hill and 
tree taken by Col. Cardew may be seen in the Geographical 
Journal (July-December 1897, p. 389.) MM. Zweifel and Mous- 
tier took with them on their journey Reade’s servant Joseph 
Reader and his Limba guide Linseni, mentioned above, together 
with Sewa’s nephew, Fila. 


XVI INTRODUCTION 


Major Laing’s account of the source of the Niger, less 
than fifty miles distant from Farabana, was correct, 
and that it issues from a small lake belonging to a town 
called Deldugu and fed from an underground source 
known to the inhabitants, who yearly sacrifice to it a 
black cow. He further learned that Deldugu was the 
centre of a slave-hunting preserve, and that he would 
require an army to reach it. Then he resolved to travel 
to the gold mines of Bouré in the country of the San- 
garas, where there is no king, and where all the towns 
are, as he tells us, municipal republics armed and forti- 
fied after the manner of the Middle Ages. In this too, 
he succeeded, reaching the Niger again at a point a 
hundred miles higher than had hitherto been reached 
by any European, and by its waters he sang a kind of 
Nunc Dimittis before returning to Freetown. ‘‘Hence- 
forth,” he said, “no one can say I am only a writer; for 
I have proved myself a man of action as well as a man 
of thought. When in the morning I have taken my 
coffee which sets my brain in a tremble and a glow, I 
walk along the red path, and as the country unfolds 
itself before me I say, ‘This is mine: here no European 
has been; it is Reade’s Land.’” From Bouré, as from 
Falaba, he took back with him some influential natives 
who made an agreement in Sierra Leone with the Gov- 
ernor for the keeping open of the trade route. Thus in 
ten months, as he says, he had established “friendly 
and intimate relations between the Government of 
Sierra Leone and the native powers a distance of 450 
miles from the coast.” 

Thus ended Reade’s explorations in Africa. He had 
done wonders, especially when his youth and inexperi- 
ence are considered, and he appears to be quite right 
when he says that by penetrating to within a short 
distance of Bamaku, the highest point on the Niger 
reached by Mungo Park in 1747, he had filled up the 


* African Sketch Book, ii. p. 476. *Op. cit., li. p. 503. 


INTRODUCTION XVii 


gap between that worthy’s discoveries and those of 
Major Laing. Yet the gods sometimes punish us by 
granting our requests, and it is very doubtful whether 
all his trials and sufferings would have alone sufficed to 
gain him the immortal fame for which he longed. He 
had long been a Fellow of the Geographical Society, to 
whose Secretary he owed, as we have seen, the introduc- 
tion which put it in his power to make his second ex- 
pedition, and who were put in some not very clearly 
defined way in charge of it. Yet he certainly did not 
receive the Society’s Gold Medal, which he once speaks 
of as the distinction he most coveted, and his exploits 
seem to have been mentioned neither in their Proceed- 
ings nor in the newspapers of the time.’ He himself 
complains * that his journey to the Niger and Bouré had 
not excited “the slightest interest among English geogra- 
phers.” Yet this is hardly to be wondered at. Reade 
seems to have studiously avoided the taking of obser- 
vations, and left behind him on starting from Freetown 
the sextant and artificial horizon lent to him by the 
Geographical Society for that purpose. Moreover, he 
did not himself see the source of the Niger, and the in- 
formation on the subject that he collected was all drawn 
from accounts of natives, and therefore while unsup- 
ported of no great evidential value. But the cause 
which chiefly contributed to the public neglect of his 
results was the extraordinary form in which he thought 


*It would appear from a collation of Reade’s own statements 
(op. cit., pp. 353, 437) that the money to be found by Mr Swanzy 
was only to be advanced on the advice of the Council. The 
second journey from Freetown to the gold-mines of Bouré seems 
to have cost £200. 

* The very brief report made by Reade to Sir Arthur Kennedy 
on his return (21st Dec. 1869) was afterwards communicated by 
the Colonial Office to the Society and inserted in their Journal 
(see Proceedings Roy. Geog. Soc., vol. xiv. p. 185) Save for this 
and the obituary notice at the Anniversary Meeting of 1875, I 
cannot find any mention of his name in the Society’s transactions. 

* African Sketch Book, vol. ii. p. 505, 


XViil INTRODUCTION 


fit to publish them. They did not appear at all until 
three years after his return to England, and then only 
in the form of a journal kept while in the bush for the 
perusal of a lady whom he addresses as “Dear Mar- 
garet,’ and for whom he seems to have had a deep 
and tender regard.’ Even then they formed only a kind 
of appendix to the African Sketch Book,’ from which I 
have so often quoted. But this work was itself a kind 
of olla podrida, being in great part an abridgment of 
his former work, Savage Africa,’ and was stuffed with 
tales of savage life which are avowedly, like the illustra- 
tions with which it abounds, drawn from the imagina- 
tion merely. Hence, although it contains much solid 
information on anthropological matters and several good 
maps, it is hardly the kind of work that a geographer 
would be likely to consult. It is now extremely scarce, 
but the late Elisée Reclus* seems to have studied it 
with advantage, as did the late Mary Kingsley, and 
Sir Harry Johnston.* 


* As witness the following words, written when he believed him- 
self to be dying at Falaba: 

“Dear Margaret, be my friend as I am yours: if the horse 
returns with an empty saddle, if these letters come to you by 
themselves, remember me with kindness, forget our little quarrel, 
pardon me that one angry word, and place gentle thoughts, like 
flowers, on my distant and ignoble grave. If I do come back, be 
my good angel and adviser. Perhaps by this time you are 
married; but the feelings which I have for you need not excite 
distrust or jealousy: I only desire your sympathy and esteem,.”— 
African Sketch Book, vol. ii. p. 450. The heroines of two of his 
novels are also named Margaret. 

*“The Swanzy Expedition,” as he there calls it, only occupies 
180 pages out of the thousand and more that its two volumes 
contain,. 

*It is curious that this, although a most readable book of 
travel, was also an expansion of a sort of journal kept for the 
information of a friend. 

* Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, t. xii. pp. 514, 541, 549, and 
551. 

"West African Studies, pp. 73, 227.  ° Liberia, vol. i. p. 256. 


INTRODUCTION xix 


At the end of this book, Reade bids a solemn, and 
as he thought an eternal, farewell to Africa; yet he 
was destined to visit it once more before he died. The 
year that the African Sketch Book appeared the Ashanti 
War broke out, and Reade, thinking with great reason 
that his knowledge of the Coast combined with his lit- 
erary experience gave him special claims to the post, 
offered his services to the J’mes as their Correspondent 
at the front. The offer was accepted, and on the 12th 
September 1873, he embarked with Sir Garnet Wolseley 
(as he then was) on board the s.s. Ambriz of the West 
African Line. He went all through the war which fol- 
lowed and was the only civilian present at the taking 
of Coomassie. On the march he attached himself espe- 
cially to the 42nd Foot (Black Watch), in whose ranks 
he fought at the battle of Amoaful; but he was again 
attacked by dysentery and fever, and on his return 
home the following year it was evident that his con- 
stitution was entirely broken down, and that both his 
heart and lungs had suffered irreparable injury. He 
lived long enough to publish, under the title of The 
Story of the Ashanti Campaign, his experiences of the 
war. The book was in fact an amplification of his let- 
ters to the Times, and in its pages he, characteristically 
enough, spared neither the strategy of the General, nor 
the vacillating policy of the Government which resolved 
on the expedition. He also wrote, while the hand of 
death was, as we learn, actually upon him, The Out- 
cast, a novel in which he sets forth the persecution 
which awaited in the England of his time the open pro- 
fession of anti-Christian opinions. The book is in the 
awkward form of letters written by a dying father to his 
daughter, in which he describes with some pathos the 
struggles of an “intellectual” who, cast off by his family 
and driven from one employment to another on account 
of his religious views, sees his wife die of starvation, 
and is only himself saved from the same fate by the 


XX INTRODUCTION 


interposition of a thief with whom he chances to be- 
come acquainted. The novel had no greater success 
than its predecessors, but was the last of his writings. 
He gradually sank until two of his friends, seeing his 
state, removed him to the house of Dr Sandwith (of 
Kars) at Wimbledon. Here he revived for a few days, 
but at length died on the 24th April 1875, as we are told, 
in the arms of his uncle, Charles Reade. Three months 
before, he had completed his 36th year. 

Thus died Winwood Reade, in the words of his uncle,’ 
heir to considerable estates which he did not live long 
enough to inherit, and gifted with genius which he had 
no time to mature. Those who study his writings with- 
out personal or family prepossessions will be inclined 
to revise the last part of this judgment; for it is plain 
that, apart from a talent for direct and forcible state- 
ment, Reade’s writings do not exhibit any marked lit- 
erary gift. An earnest and inquiring reader, always 
digging into the works of encyclopedic writers like 
Buckle, Spencer, Tylor and Lubbock, he seems seldom 
to have consulted their sources, or to have attempted 
to strike out a line for himself in original research. 
Yet he had the gift of forming a clear mental picture 
of the results of his reading, and with practice would 
have found so little difficulty in transferring it to paper 
that he might easily have surpassed his guides even in 
their own field. Unfortunately, he seems to have been 
imbued from the first with the idea that fiction was 
the only guise in which his ideas could reach the ears 
of that great public for whose applause he lusted, and 
the courage and tenacity which was his most dis- 
tinguishing characteristic led him to persevere in this, 
changing his style, as we have seen, from time to time, 
rather than adopt a medium better fitted to him. That 
his novels never attained any popularity in his lifetime, 
and have fallen into oblivion since his death is, I think, 


* Daily Telegraph, 27th April 1875. 


INTRODUCTION XX1 


to be explained on this hypothesis. They show no gift 
of characterization, and in the whole series there ap- 
pears no personage whose personality seems real to the 
eyes of the most indulgent reader. Nor is there any 
reason to suppose that his characters were any more 
real or lifelike to their creator. He seems to have 
regarded them throughout as a set of puppets into whose 
mouths he could thrust the opinions that he wished to 
lay before the public; and as Reade mixed very little 
with the world, it follows that both the incidents and 
the dialogue in his books are conventional to the last 
degree. Moreover, he appears to have been always a 
singularly self-centred and self-reliant man—as may 
be seen from his readiness when hardly out of his teens 
to plunge into the bush with no other companions than 
natives—and, like his uncle, to have been born with a 
taste for dogmatically instructing his readers. Hence it 
comes about that his novels are autobiographical to an 
extent seldom to be found in modern fiction, and that 
it would be almost impossible to construct from them, 
even without the help of the self-revelations in the 
journal from which quotations have been made above, an 
accurate picture of Reade as he appeared to himself.’ 
It is therefore not astonishing that we find him avow- 
ing in the person of Raymond Jenoure in See-Saw his 
intention of painting a series of pictures depicting the 
passions and their influence, of travelling in foreign 
countries so as to observe the manners and customs of 
other and especially of savage peoples, and then “should 
I ever live to carry out these two gigantic designs, hav- 
ing by that time read all the great books, studied all the 


1It is to be noted in this connection that his three heroines, 
Margaret in Liberty Hall, Maddalena in See-Saw and (again) 
Margaret in The Outcast, are all of what may be called the 
Patient Griselda type, whose only function is to listen to the 
preachments of their lovers and to comfort them in their strug- 
gles, while they themselves meekly endure the hardships into 
which the wilfulness of these last thrust them. 


XXil INTRODUCTION 


great languages, travelled everywhere and seen every- 
thing, 1 shall begin to write the History of the World.” 

In his novels and his travels he had thus accom- 
plished in some sort the two first heads of his design, 
and the following pages show how he successfully car- 
ried out the third. 

We have seen that Reade’s longing to achieve some- 
thing which should cause him to be remembered after 
his death was an abiding passion, and how all the ef- 
forts that he consciously made towards this end failed, 
in his own judgment, to achieve it. Yet a book that 
he wrote in great measure to ease his conscience was 
destined, in spite of the most violent opposition, to 
make its way where his other endeavours failed, and 
is still read with pleasure by a large and apparently 
increasing public among the generation which sprang 
up after his death. Such a phenomenon is almost with- 
out parallel in the history of literature, and cannot, I 
think, be attributed merely to the subject-matter of the 
book. Perhaps Reade’s style had benefited, as some- 
times happens, by the long period of literary idleness 
that it underwent at Falaba, when, as he tells is, he 
found it impossible to write anything intended for the 
public; or perhaps it was purified by the abandonment 
of the conscious striving after effect noticeable in his 
earlier works;—the fact remains that the Martyrdom of 
Man shows just that touch of genius which is lacking 
in its author’s romances and travel-books, and merits in 
full measure the eulogies which such different critics as 
Sir Henry Rawlinson, Charles Reade, and Sir Harry 
Johnston have bestowed upon its literary style. 

His own account of its origin is that he first intended 
to write a history of Africa, showing its connection with 
that of the more familiar quarters of the world, that he 
found that this entailed a history of all religions from 
that of primitive folk down to Islam, the last-comer 


*See infra, p. xxxv. 


INTRODUCTION XX111 


among world-religions; and that to these he added a 
sketch of the slave-trade made for another purpose, and 
the summary of a projected work on the origin of the 
human mind which the publication of Charles Darwin’s 
Descent of Man had rendered abortive. No doubt this 
describes with sufficient exactness the actual stages of 
the book’s evolution, but we have seen that seven years 
before the Martyrdom of Man, he had been possessed 
by the idea of writing a history of the world, and it is 
probably with this idea that he collected and digested 
the great mass of material necessary for the present 
book. Hence it is under this aspect that Martyrdom of 
Man must first of all be judged, and it may be said at 
once that it came to fill a most undesirable gap in the 
knowledge of most of us. In the system of education 
prevailing when he wrote—and things do not seem to 
have materially altered since—the schoolmaster’s first 
axiom was that it was better to know one or two things 
accurately than to have a superficial knowledge of a 
great many, and specialization reigned supreme in his- 
tory as in all branches of learning. Hence it came about 
that while one scholar devoted his attention to, for in- 
stance, the Peloponnesian War, another made himself 
an authority on the struggle between Rome and 
Carthage, and both would have regarded as beside the 
mark any attempt to show how either conflict affected 
the course of modern history or the march of civiliza- 
tion. As for the history of the East as known to the 
ancients beyond the classic regions of Greece and Rome, 
this was abandoned in all academic circles to explorers 
like Layard and curators of museums like Birch, while 
the prepossessions with which it was approached are 
shown by the fact that the only collective name given 
to it was that of Biblical Archeology. Only in so far 
as it was necessary for the better understanding of the 
Bible was the history of Egypt, of Babylonia, and of 
the countries that lie between, thought fit for the in- 


XXIV INTRODUCTION 


formation of the general reader or, in other words, of the 
man who did not wish to make professional use of his 
knowledge.’ 

From this state of things, Winwood Reade was the 
first to deliver us. For the first time, he gave us, dashed 
in with a few bold strokes, the history of Greek and 
Roman culture seen, not as the very fount and origin 
of all civilization, but in its proper place as a mere 
episode in the course of universal history; and to this 
he joined, in such a way as to be understanded of the 
people, the history of the nations that had preceded 
Greece and Rome on the one hand, and, on the other, 
that of the peoples subjugated by the Mahometan con- 
quest, the ramifications of which in Africa he had in- 
vestigated at first hand. Nor was this done in the 
dry-as-dust manner dear to instructors of youth, nor in 
the controversial style almost forced upon those experts 
who try to act as guides through undiscovered terri- 
tories, where every foot of the way has to be disputed 
with rivals. He tells us in his Preface that he had at 
one time intended to give his authorities in full “with 
notes and elucidations”; but we may heartily congratu- 
late ourselves that he did nothing of the kind. Had he 
carried out his original intention, his book would at 
once have been attacked by specialists who took a dif- 
ferent view of his authorities from himself, or might 
perhaps have been angry at their own researches being 


1T well remember the horror with which one who had taken 
high honours in the Historical Tripos at Cambridge received my 
statement, made fresh from my first perusal of the Martyrdom of 
Man, that Alexander the Great had changed the whole course of 
human history. With an air in which pity struggled with con- 
tempt, he informed me that as a general, Alexander was not to be 
thought of with Julius Cesar, while his conquests in Asia were 
so ephemeral as to be only comparable with the invasion of 
Herodotus’ Scyths. Yet Marlowe in his time took a clearer view 
of things, and styled Alexander “the chief spectacle of the world’s 
pre-eminence.” 


INTRODUCTION XXV 


omitted from the catalogue; and the din which would 
have followed would probably have prevented the gen- 
eral public from reading it at all. Instead of this, we 
have an easy, flowing narrative which the least well- 
informed can follow, written in the incisive and epi- 
grammatic phrases which give at least as much pleasure 
to the reader as he tells us they did to the writer; while 
for authorities he refers us to books like Wilkinson’s 
Ancient Egyptians, Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place in Universal 
History, Rawlinson’s Herodotus, Layard’s Assyria, 
Grote’s History of Greece, Gibbon’s Roman Empire, and 
Macaulay’s History of England, which were within the 
reach of all, and had long been accepted by the public 
as trustworthy guides. He anticipated, indeed, the 
modern German method which puts into the hand of 
the student of any subject the Encyclopddie in which 
the fundamental and best ascertained facts involved in 
it are broadly stated, before introducing him to the 
Handbuch, the Lehrbuch, and the rest, in which both 
facts and authorities are more or less exhaustively dis- 
cussed. The method has certain disadvantages and is 
not of universal application; but in Reade’s case, where 
the vast majority of his readers might be supposed to 
have at least some acquaintance with the facts sum- 
marized in the book, there can be no doubt of its ex- 
ceeding merits. To use an indispensable if hackneyed 
metaphor, on reading a book written on this principle, 
we begin to see the wood and to forget the trees. 

The human race, however, to use Reade’s own quo- 
tation, is not placed between the good and the bad, but 
between the bad and the worse, and it cannot be denied 
that there are gaps in Reade’s narrative. Some of these 
are, of course, to be attributed to the advance that has 
taken place in our knowledge since his time. If such a 
book were to be written at the present day, it would 
probably begin not with Egypt, but with Babylonia, as 


XXVi INTRODUCTION 


the cradle of civilization; * nor would it omit, as he does, 
all mention of the great empire of the Hittites who once 
ruled over nearly the whole of Asia Minor and fought 
on equal terms against both Egypt and the Mesopo- 
tamian powers, and of the high culture of the Eastern 
Mediterranean which Dr Arthur Evans has just recov- 
ered for us. In his religious history, we must expect to 
find even more serious omissions, for the comparative 
study of religions is a science that has sprung up since 
the Martyrdom of Man was written, and is even now 
in its infancy. None of its professors would now, I 
think, derive all worship, as does Reade (following 
therein Herbert Spencer), from the fear of ghosts, nor 
would any account of the early days of Christianity be 
considered complete without some notice of the rival 
Eastern religions, such as the worship of the Alexandrian 
Isis, and the Persian Mithras, which competed with it 
for the favour of the Western world, and of the dif- 
ferent heretical sects called in sub-Apostolic times 
Gnostics, whose survivors under their then name of 
Manicheans were in the Middle Ages to wrest for a 
time nearly all Southern Europe from the Catholic 
Church. Yet these gaps are relatively small when we 
consider the amount of canvas covered, and on the his- 
torical side a perusal of M. Maspero’s Histoire ancienne 


1 At Nippur in Babylonia, tablets in the Sumerian language 
have been discovered which are said by competent judges to have 
been written not later than 7000 B. c. No writing has been dis~ 
covered in Egypt that goes back beyond dynastic times, and the 
commencement of the First Egyptian Dynasty can hardly be put 
at an earlier date than 5000 s.c. It is quite possible, however, 
that writing may have existed in Western Asia a good deal earlier 
than 7000 3.c., and according to M, de Morgan’s latest researches, 
when the plains of Sumer and Akkad were still under the ice-cap, 
a high civilization flourished in the mountains of Elam (see 
Revue d’Assyriologie, 1909, pp. 1 sqq.) 


INTRODUCTION XXVli 


des Peuples de VOrient classique’ with its excellent 
continuation by Mr Leonard King and Mr H. R. Hall’ 
would almost suffice to bring the beginner abreast of the 
best-founded views of scholars on the subject. On the 
religious side, matters are still in that state of flux when 
theories are easier to come by than facts but the works 
of writers like Professor Tylor, Dr J. G. Frazer, and 
Dr Jevons cannot of course be neglected, and most for- 
eign universities have long since established chairs of 
comparative religion.’ Moreover, it should be noted that 
these omissions in no way interfere with the broad out- 
lines of the striking pictures that Reade shows us: and 
that, although the Egypt that he paints is not Egypt at 
her greatest and proudest, but the Egypt of the Phil- 
Hellenes, when art had become conventional and cul- 
ture had been barely saved from the withering rule of 
the priests of Amen, yet it was at this very period that 
she first began to influence Europe. That he should 
have been able thus to discern the features that were 
destined to survive the country’s independence is one of 
the most extraordinary things about this extraordinary 
book, and shows how he must have improved his critical 
powers since the Vewl of Isvs. 


*Paris 1895, in 3 vols. It has been translated into English, but 
the French version is to be preferred. An abridgment under the 
name of Histoire ancienne de l’Orient is kept up to date by the 
issue of new editions every two or three years. 

? Under the title Egypt and Western Asia in the light of Recent 
Discoveries (London, 1907). 

*For the Alexandrian or Greco-Egyptian worship, M. Lafaye’s 
Histotre du Culte des Divinités d’Alexandrie (Paris 1884) will set 
the enquirer on the right road, while for Mithraism the splendid 
Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystéres de Mithra of M. 
Cumont (Gand 1899) will tell him all that is certainly known on 
the subject. No good and modern book on Gnosticism exists, the 
Histoire du Gnosticisme (Paris 1843) of M. Matter being con- 
siderably out of date. M. Carl Schmidt’s Histoire du Secte des 
Cathares is on the whole the best book on medieval Manichzism ; 
and .M. George Foucart’s Méthode Comparative dans Il’Histoire 
des Religions will be useful in focussing the ideas of a beginner. 


XXVIII INTRODUCTION 


Had Reade been content to confine himself to his 
first intention, and to make his book merely a History 
of the World, it is probable then that it would still have 
been popular, and might by this time have come to be 
accepted as a classic. But he was both by nature and 
training an opportunist, and, as we have seen, often en- 
tered upon an undertaking with one plan, and continued 
it with another. .Thus in his youth he had gone out 
to the Gaboon to prove the truth or falsehood of Du 
Chaillu’s assertions, and had then turned his expedition 
into a rambling exploration of all the rivers on the 
Coast. Six years later, the same readiness to change: 
his plans led him to convert his quasi-diplomatic mis- 
sion to Falaba into a search for the source of the Niger, 
and, when foiled in this, into a visit to the gold mines. 
of Bouré. Moreover, the desire to impose his own opin- 
ions in all matters on his readers was at least as strongly 
marked in him as in his uncle, and is in fact the dis- 
tinguishing feature in his romances. He had thought 
long and deeply on religious subjects, and after some 
hesitation, sufficiently reflected in his works, had come 
to the conclusion that the current Christianity of his 
time was false. But with Reade, as with his uncie, from. 
a conclusion of this kind to the attempt to convert 
everyone who would listen to him to the acknowledgment. 
of its truth was but a step; and just as Charles Reade 
in his novels denounced in turn the conduct of our 
prisons, of our lunatic asylums, and of our trades- 
unions, so his nephew was moved to append to his uni- 
versal history a denunciation of contemporary Chris- 
tianity. He summed it up in this thesis:—‘Super- 
natural Christianity is false. God-worship is idolatry. 
Prayer is useless. The soul is not immortal. There are 
no rewards and there are no punishments in a future 
state.’’* 


*He afterwards, after his manner, qualified some of these very 
dogmatic statements. In the Outcast, written three years after the. 
publication of the Martyrdom of Man, he says: “I disbelieve in @ 


INTRODUCTION XX1X 


The attack was the more unexpected that Reade had 
in his former writings been careful to avoid any remarks 
offensive to the reigning religion.” In Luberty Hall as in 
The Verl of Isis, he had spoken of the Church of Eng- 
land with affection as well as with respect, and if he 
had in See-Saw condemned the narrowness of certain 
Protestant sects, it was apparently only in order to 
bring into relief the greater charity of the Elder Sister. 
In his papers before the Anthropological Institute, 
again, while commending Islam as a better religion than 
Christianity for the savages races of Africa, he had yet 
disclaimed all attempts to judge between their intrinsic 
merits, and had borne willing witness to the self-sac- 
rifice and the moral lives of the missionaries of all de- 
nominations then at work upon the Coast. Moreover, 
in the Martyrdom of Man itself, he had displayed po- 
litical opinions directly opposed to the violent and revo- 
lutionary doctrines of those extremists who, under the 
names of Communists, Anarchists, and the like, had for 
a few months held France in terror, and were in this 
country almost the only professed opponents of Chris- 
tianity. In it, he had defended the Monarchy, praised 
the hereditary system of the House of Peers, and de- 
clared that the whole government of our country was “as 
nearly perfect as any government can be.” Yet the 
writer who could thus show himself a friend to the 
established order of things, who could condemn Com- 
munism as absurd, and declare that England was better 
governed than America, in the same book declared that 
Christianity must be destroyed, and that in his fugure 


future life; and this disbelief amounts to a positive conviction. 
But I may be mistaken. It is impossible to know. The doctrine 
or theory of a future life is not contrary to reason like that of a 
Personal Creator. We can show it to be most improbable; but on 
the other hand we must allow that it is a possible contingency” 
(pp. 257 sq.). 

*See Anthropological Review, vol. iii., Meeting of 14th March 
1865. Cf. Savage Africa, passim. 


XXX INTRODUCTION 


assaults upon it he should use “the clearest language 
that he was able to command.” All those who were 
interested in the propagation of the Christian faith in 
any of its forms must indeed have felt that it was 
wounded in the house of a friend. 

The consequence was that no one could be found to 
say a good word for the book. Newspapers like the 
Times, the Spectator, and the Academy refused ‘to 
notice it in their columns. The Saturday Review,’ in a 
long and, in some respects, not unfair article, said, “it is 
wild, mischievous, and we should hardly be wrong if 
we added blasphemous,” while it deplored the fact that 
a book which began so well should end so ill. The 
Atheneum which had treated Reade’s first literary at- 
tempts with great severity, but appeared to have been 
placated by a kind of apology in the preface to the 
Veil of Isis, described it* as a “thoroughly worthless 
book, needlessly profane and indecent into the bargain,” 
while it assured its readers that so far from being able 
to do any mischief, there was “a vulgarity about it which 
would at once frighten any schoolboy off who might 
otherwise be in danger of falling a convert to ‘the Re- 
ligion of Reason and Love.’” Yet all these diatribes 
were entirely ineffective. From the first, the book sold 
well, and edition after edition was struck off without the 
call for it in any way diminishing. In the thirty-seven 
years that have elapsed since its first publication up- 
wards of fifteen thousand copies of it have been sold; 
and this demand has been perfectly spontaneous, no 
favourable review of it having appeared, so far as can 
be ascertained, until 1906, while the book has remained 
in all respects unaltered, and no attempt has been made 
to increase its sale by advertisement. The young 
authors who pester editors and others for favourable 
notices on what the late Walter Besant called the “A- 
word-from-you”’ principle may take heart from this in- 


* 12th October 1872. 711th May 1872. 


INTRODUCTION Xxxl 


stance, and may be assured that if their productions 
have any intrinsic attraction they will make their way 
in the teeth of criticism. 

The fact seems to be that if, in historical matters, 
Reade relied only on long-proved guides, in religion he 
was a good deal in advance of his age. Charles Reade’ 
was of opinion that in another fifteen years he would 
have recanted opinions which, in his uncle’s judgment, 
laid him open to “reasonable censure.” This is not 
impossible, because, as we have seen, his religious ideas 
had more than once undergone change, and this had 
not always been in the direction of laxity. It is plain, 
too, that those which he set forth in the Martyrdom of 
Man were so unfamiliar to his critics that they gravely 
misunderstood them: He has often been called an 
atheist *: but. unless “atheist” be taken merely as a 
term of abuse for those who: denounce the reigning re- 
ligion—in which sense, by the way, it was applied to the 
first Christians—no one was less an atheist than Reade. 
So far from denying the existence of God, he goes out 
of his way in all his writings to assert it. When he 
affirms that a time will come when “man will be perfect; 
he will then be a creator; he will therefore be what the 
vulgar worship as a god,” he is careful to assert that 
“even then he will in reality be no nearer than he is at 
present to the First Cause, the Inscrutable Mystery, the 
God,” * and a belief in this Supreme Being seems to have 
been the strongest of his convictions. He puts it, indeed, 
in the form of a confession of faith in the Outcast, 
‘written by him, as we have seen, on his deathbed, where 
he makes his hero say, “I believe in God, the Incompre- 
hensible, whose nature man can never ascertain.” He 
did not, indeed, believe in a Personal Creator, because, 
as he points out more than once,’ those who thus believe 

1 Obituary notice in Daily Telegraph, 27th April 1875. 

2 Mr Thompson Cooper, F.S.A., repeats the charge in his article 
on Reade in the Dictionary of National Buography. 

* Infra, p. 515. ‘Infra, p. 518 sqq. 


XXXil INTRODUCTION 


are at once brought face to face with the dilemma of 
Epicurus that the Creator cannot at once be omnipo- 
tent and benevolent. From this dilemma, none of the 
great monotheistic religions—Judzism, Christianity, 
and Islam—seems to have provided any escape and, 
according to Reade, the only way of avoiding it is to 
believe that “the Supreme Power is not a Mind, but 
something higher than a Mind; not a Force, but some- 
thing higher than*a Force; not a Being, but something 
higher than a Being; something for which we have no 
words, something for which we have no ideas.”* Now, 
twelve years after the publication of the Martyrdom 
of Man, we find Herbert Spencer writing in a contro- 
versial article appearing in a popular magazine,—and 
therefore we may suppose divested, so far as in him lay, 
of all the reservations and divagations that he found 
necessary in his more purely philosophical writings:— 
“Though the attributes of personality, as we know it, 
cannot be conceived by us as attributes of the Unknown 
Cause of things, yet duty requires us neither to affirm 
nor to deny personality, but to submit ourselves in all 
humility to the established limits of our intelligence, in 
the conviction that the choice is not between person- 
ality and something lower than personality, but be- 
tween personality and something higher; and that the 
Ultimate Power is no more representable in terms of 
human consciousness than human consciousness is rep- 
resentable in terms of a plant’s functions.” ’ 

Reade in the passages quoted above may have been 
directly inspired by Herbert Spencer, whom he men- 
tions in his preface as one of his “chief guides,” and 
whose works he recommends his readers to study care- 
fully and in their entirety; but in any event the concep- 
tion of the Deity professed by both appears to have 
been exactly the same. Why then should Reade’s state- 


* Infra, p. 521. 
* Nineteenth Century, July 1884, p. 7. 


INTRODUCTION XXXii1 


ment of it be stigmatized as blasphemous, needlessly 
profane, and mischievous, while its restatement at the 
end of a decade was hailed by the champions of ortho- 
doxy as a convincing presertation of their own posi- 
tion?“ I can find no answer to this question save the 
lapse of time. 

I pass over Reade’s passionate assertion that “those 
who desire to worship their Creator must worship him 
through mankind,” because this seems to me to be too 
plainly in accord with the teaching of St Simon, Comte, 
and Mr Frederic Harrison for the essential identity of 
the two doctrines to be disputed, and we come to what 
I believe to have been the head and front of Reade’s 
offence against orthodoxy, in his treatment of Scripture. 
Tt is very difficult, perhaps, for any of the present gen- 
eration to realize the extraordinary reverence with 
which even the letter of the Bible was treated in the early 
seventies, or the indignation with which any attempt 
to cast doubt upon the exact truth of its narrative was 
repelled. One need not go back to the assertions of the 
Council of Trent and of the Westminster Confession 
alike that God was “the author of the Old and New 


7T have not myself verified the quotation, but Mr Frederic 
Harrison in his article ‘Agnostic Metaphysics’ (Nineteenth 
Century, May 1884) says:—“Mr Spencer has developed his Un- 
knowable into an ‘Infinite and Eternal Energy, by which all 
things are created and sustained.’ He has discovered it to be the 
Ultimate Cause, the All-Being, the Creative Power, and all the 
other ‘alternative impossibilities of thought’ which he once cast 
in the teeth of the older theologies. Naturally there is joy over 
one philosopher who repenteth. The Christian World claims this 
as equivalent to the assertion that God is the Mind and Spirit 
of the universe and The Christian World says these words 
might have been used by Butler and Paley.” 

The position that such beliefs are a negation of Agnosticism 
itself is well taken by Mr Charles B. Upton in his Lectures on the 
Bases of Religious Belief (London 1894) Lecture III., which first 
put me on the track of this controversy. 


XXXIV INTRODUCTION 


Testaments” to see that this was a point—perhaps the 
only one—in which Catholics and Protestants of every 
denomination were heartily agreed. The horrors attend- 
ing the rising and suppression of the Communist Revo- 
lution in Paris had confirmed the fear common to most 
moderate men brought up in this faith that its main- 
tenance was, in some not very clearly defined way, in- 
extricably bound up with the very foundations of 
society; and the’ professors of revealed religion took 
abundant care that the lesson was not lost for want of 
reiteration. Hence Reade could hardly have chosen a 
worse time than he did for his assault upon this cher- 
ished belief, against which he ran, after his fashion, 
full tilt. But had he lived till now, he would have 
found not only that he was engaged in forcing an open 
door—an exercise for which he had always the strongest 
disinclination,—but that a great proportion of those 
within it had themselves set it wide. The Principal of 
the chief educational institution for the dissemination 
of what is known as “Unitarian” Christianity said in 
1895, in the course of a kind of allocution on the sub- 
ject:—‘‘At the present day an increasing number of men 
are becoming convinced that this doctrine |2.e. “the in- 
fallible truth and Divine authority” of the Bible] is 
contrary to fact and cannot be maintained; and among 
these men are not only opponents of Christianity in all 
its forms, but also believers who feel that Christianity 
is the breath of their life, and that in the rejection of 
this ancient doctrine they are only getting nearer to 
the heart of religion. Among important groups of theo- 
logians the question is, not how they shall defend this 
dogma as the last stronghold of the Gospel against the 
swarming hordes of atheism and immorality, but how 
they shall rid Christianity of what has become an ob- 
scuration and an encumbrance, and still retain all the 


INTRODUCTION XXXV" 


spiritual value of the ancient creed,”* and that this. 
statement was abundantly justified by the facts, later 
developments have shown. In the Martyrdom of Man, 
Reade talked of Moses as a visionary, and said that he 
consciously deceived the children of Israel, the deceit. 
being according to him not incapable of justification. 
But if he had lived to see the Encyclopeedia Biblica, he 
would have read there the statements of one who was: 
at once a Canon of the Church of England and Oriel 
Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at. 
Oxford, that Moses probably never existed at all, and. 
that:—‘“the tradition of the migration led by ‘Moses’ 
is in fact necessarily without personal names, the names 
of Moses, Amram, Jochebed, etc., being all ethnic, and 
not really borne by individuals. All that the earliest. 
tradition knew was that a tribe closely connected with 
the Misrites and Jerahmeelites, and specially addicted 
to the worship of Yahwé, the god of Horeb, played a 
leading .part in the migration of the Israelites into 
Canaan.” ’ 

It may be said, of course, that this is a matter con- 
cerning only the Old Testament, as to which the Cath- 
olic Church has always allowed commentators great: 
latitude of interpretation;* but that Reade offended the 
sensibilities of all Christians by writing of the Founder 
of Christianity in a profane and disrespectful way. Yet 
it does not seem that this charge is better made out 
than the other. Reade, indeed, speaks of the “sim- 
plicity” of Jesus, thinks that He would have been a 


*Via, Veritas, Vita: Lectures on “Christianity in its most 
simple and intelligent form.” By James Drummond (London 
1895) pp. 45, 46. Dr Drummond was at the time Principal of 
Manchester College. 

* Encyclopedia Biblica (London 1902), vol. iii., Article on 
“Moses” by the editor, the Rev. Canon T. K. Cheyne. 

* As in the case of Cardinal Cajetano, who asserted that all the 
stories in the Pentateuch must be taken allegorically, without his 
works being even placed on the IJndez. 


XXXV1 INTRODUCTION 


persecutor if he had had the power, and considers that 
He was lawfully condemned to death, according to Bible 
Law. Without enquiring into the truth of these asser- 
tions, it may be said that they are not marked by any 
contemptuous expressions, and that they do not pass 
beyond the license of a historian when dealing with an 
historical character considered as such. Hence, while 
they would certainly appear shocking to anyone who 
believes fully in the divinity of Jesus, they should not 
be offensive to anyone who considers Him merely a 
man like other men. But few who have not followed 
the subject are aware of the great change that has come 
over the language of Protestant theologians on this point 
within the last decade. Thus in the Encyclopedia be- 
fore quoted, we find the author of the article on “Jesus” 
saying with regard to the “acts of healing” that 
“whether miraculous or not, whether the works of a mere 
man or not,”* they were at any rate a manifestation 
of the love of Jesus for mankind. In speaking of the 
Passion, the same writer declares that “for modern 
criticism the story, even in its most historic version, is 
not pure truth, but truth mixed with doubtful legend.” 
In another article on “the Gospels,” it is stated that, 
while some former statements of the writer “may have 
sometimes seemed to raise a doubt whether any credible 
elements were to be found in the gospels at all,” yet nine 
passages in them are so far authentic that they “might 
be called the foundation-pillars for a truly scientific 
life of Jesus,” and that: “they prove not only that in 
the person of Jesus we have to do with a completely hu- 
man being, and that the divine is to be sought in him 
only in the form in which it is capable of being found 
in a man; they also prove that he really did exist, and 


* Encyclopeedia Biblica, vol. ii. The article is by the late A. B. 
Bruce, then Professor of Exegesis in the Free Church College at 
Glasgow. 


INTRODUCTION XXXVI 


that the gospels contain at least some absolutely trust- 
worthy facts concerning him.’ * 

If such language is now used by the professional 
apologists of Christianity themselves, they can hardly 
complain of the allusions to its Founder made nearly 
forty years ago by one who avowed himself its enemy. 

There remain to be dealt with the predictions of the 
future of the human race with which Reade concluded 
his book, and which were greeted by the critics at the 
time as “wild stuff,” “hysterical rhapsody” and the like. 
Reade had by nature a turn for positive science which, 
in other circumstances, might have enabled him to do 
good work in research. He was always alive to the ad- 
vantage of the diligent accumulation of ascertained 
facts, and, during his “Swanzy expedition” collected a 
large number of both paleolithic and neolithic flint im- 
plements which are still of value to students.’ But his 
training in physics and chemistry must have been lim- 
ited to the three years’ course that he pursued at St 
Mary’s Hospital, and after that date, he can hardly 
have had the time to make experiments for himself. 
Hence it will be with some astonishment that physicists 
find him predicting the advent of:—‘“Three inventions 
which perhaps may be long delayed, but which possibly 
are near at hand. . . . The first is the discovery of 
a motive force which will take the place of steam with 
its cumbrous fuel of oil or coal; secondly, the invention 
of aerial locomotion which will transport labour at a 
trifling cost of money and time to any part of the 
planet . . .; and thirdly, the manufacture of flesh 


Encyclopedia Biblica, vol. ctt., s.v. Gospels. The part of the 
article quoted is by Paul W. Schmiedel, Professor of New Testa- 
ment Exegesis, Zurich. 

* They are now in the Stone Age Implements Room (Central 
Saloon) of the British Museum whither they found their way from 
the Christy Collection, to which they were presented by Mr 
Swanzy. 


XXXVI1Ll INTRODUCTION 


and flour from the elements by a chemical process in 
the laboratory, similar to that which is now performed 
within the bodies of animals and plants.” 

We need not follow him in his vision of the extraor- 
dinary benefits to mankind that will accrue from these 
inventions, and may even consider it unlikely that they 
would have the effects that he would attribute to them. 
But it is surprising to find that all the three inventions 
ne foretells are considerably nearer realization than 
they were at the time he wrote. Electricity and petrol 
are rapidly ousting steam from our railways and horse- 
drawn carriages from our streets, and if any of the 
projects recently devised for the direct use of solar heat 
succeed, there can be little doubt that steam will in 
the long run be superseded for all mechanical purposes. 
Aerial navigation has during the last decade made such 
rapid progress that it may almost be said that the 
“Conquest of the Air,” which forms so frequent a head- 
ing In our newspapers, has already been achieved in 
principle, although a much longer time will probably 
elapse before it can be consolidated and brought to 
fruition. As for the third invention, its complete real- 
ization doubtless seems at present as far off as ever; but 
it should be noted that the different systems that have 
lately been adopted for fixing the nitrogen of the air 
have for their object the making of two grains of wheat 
grow where only one grew before, and therefore of prac- 
tically doubling the production of the principal food- 
stuff of mankind. That Reade should have pitched 
upon these three lines of advance in sciences in which 
he was not an expert, shows that his reading in them 
must have been well-chosen, if not profound; and offers 
one instance the more that in science, as in other 


*See the Atheneum, Ist July 1909, for some account of 
these. 


INTRODUCTION XXX1X 


matters, it is lookers-on that see most of the game.’ 

To sum up, then, we see that Reade was “neither 
an atheist nor an irreligious libertine,” and that in both 
religion and science, the Martyrdom of Man anticipated 
many of the recent tendencies of modern thought. As 
what it professes to be—an Introduction to Universal 
History—it is in the main a sure guide, while the ease 
and distinction of its style has given it, and in all 
probability will continue to give it, thousands of readers 
who would never look into a book on the subject written 
avowedly for their instruction. Sir Harry Johnston has 
declared that ‘it should be given by the State to every 
young man and woman in the United Kingdom, the 
United States and—shall we add?—Liberia, on their 
attaining the age of twenty-one years.”* In the present 
state of affairs, this would seem a counsel of perfection 
rather than one for adoption in practice, but there can 
be little doubt that the Martyrdom of Man will long 
remain a striking example of a book which, by sheer 
honesty of purpose and brilliancy of execution, has suc- 
ceeded in overcoming all opposition, and has still before 
it a career of enduring utility. 


1Tt is a fact lately much commented on that most of the great 
generalizations in physics have been made, not by those occupied 
in research, but by men who had gained practical experience in 
other professions. Thus, Robert Mayer, the discoverer of the law 
of conservation of energy, was a doctor; Carnot, the founder of 
thermo-dynamics, an engineer; and Joule, who first gave the 
mechanical equivalent of heat, a brewer. See Svante Arrhenius, 
The Life of the Universe, (London 1909), p. 228. 

* Inberta (London 1906), vol. ii., p. 257. 









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AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


In 1862-3 I made a tour in Western Africa, and 
afterwards desired to revisit that strange country with 
the view of opening up new ground, and of studying 
religion and morality among the natives. I was, how- 
ever, unable to bear a second time the great expenses of 
African travelling, and had almost given up the hope of 
becoming an explorer, when I was introduced by Mr 
Bates, the well-known Amazon traveller, and Secretary 
of the Royal Geographical Society, to one of its Asso- 
ciates, Mr Andrew Swanzy, who had long desired to do 
something in the cause of African Discovery. He placed 
unlimited means at my disposal, and left me free to 
choose my own route. I travelled in Africa two years: 
(’68-’'70), and made a journey which is mentioned in 
the text. The narrative of my travels will be published 
in due course; I allude to them now in order to show 
that I have had some personal experience of savages, 
and I wish also to take the first opportunity of thank- 
ing Mr Swanzy for his assistance, which was given not. 
only in the most generous but also in the most graceful 
manner. With respect to the present work, I com- 
menced it intending to prove that Negro-land or Inner 
Africa is not cut off from the main-stream of events as 
writers of philosophical history have always maintained, 
but that it is connected by means of Islam with the 
lands of the East, and also that it has, by means of the 
slave-trade, powerfully influenced the moral history of 
Europe, and the political history of the United States. 
But I was gradually led from the history of Africa into 

xli 


xlii AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


writing the history of the world. I could not describe 
the Negroland of ancient times without describing Egypt 
and Carthage. From Egypt I was drawn to Asia and 
to Greece, from Carthage I was drawn to Rome. That 
is the first chapter. Next, having to relate the progress 
of the Mahometans in Central Africa, it was necessary 
for me to explain the nature and origin of Islam; but 
that religion cannot be understood without a previous 
study of Christianity and Judaism, and those religions 
cannot be understood without a study of religion among 
savages. That is the second chapter. Thirdly, I 
sketched the history of the slave-trade, which took me 
back to the discoveries of the Portuguese, the glories of 
Venetian commerce, the Revival of the Arts, the Dark 
Ages, and the Invasion of the Germans. Thus finding 
that my outline of Universal History was almost com- 
plete, I determined in the last chapter to give a brief 
summary of the whole, filling up the parts omitted, and 
adding to it the materials of another work suggested 
several years ago by the “Origin of Species.” One of 
my reasons for revisiting Africa was to collect materials 
for this work, which I had intended to call “The Origin 
of Mind.” However, Mr Darwin’s “Descent of Man” 
has left little for me to say respecting the birth and 
infancy of the faculties and affections. I, therefore, 
merely follow in his footsteps, not from blind veneration 
for a Great Master, but because I find that his con- 
clusions are confirmed by the phenomena of savage life. 
On certain minor points I venture to dissent from Mr 
Darwin’s views, as I shall show in my personal narra- 
tive, and there is probably much in this work of which 
Mr Darwin will disapprove. He must, therefore, not be 
made responsible for all the opinions of his disciple. I 
intended to have given my authorities in full, with notes 
and elucidations, but am prevented from doing so by 
want of space, this volume being already larger than it 
should be. I wish therefore to impress upon the reader 


AUTHOR’S PREFACE xlili 


that there is scarcely anything in this work which I can 
claim as my own. I have taken not only facts and ideas, 
but phrases and even paragraphs from other writers. I 
cannot pay all my debts in full, but I must at least do 
myself the pleasure to mention those authors who have 
been my chief guides. On Egypt, Wilkinson, Rawlin- 
son’s Herodotus, Bunsen; Hthiopia or Abyssinia, Bruce, 
Baker, Lepsius; Carthage, Heeren’s African Nations, 
Niebuhr, Mommsen; East Africa, Vincent’s Periplus, 
Guillain, Hakluyt Society’s Publications; Moslem Africa 
(Central), Park, Caillié, Denham and Clapperton, 
Lander, Barth, Ibn Batuta, Leo Africanus; Guinea and 
South Africa, Azurara, Barros, Major, Hakluyt, Pur- 
chas, Livingstone; Assyria, Sir H. Rawlinson, Layard; 
India, Max Muller, Weber; Persia, Heeren’s Asiatic 
Nations; Central Asia, Burnes, Wolff, Vambéry; Arabia, 
Niebuhr, Caussin de Perceval, Sprenger, Deutsch, Muir, 
Burckhardt, Burton, Palgrave; Palestine, Dean Stanley, 
Renan, Déllinger, Spinoza, Robinson, Neander; Greece, 
Grote, O. Miller, Curtius, Heeren, Lewes, Taine, About, 
Becker’s Charicles; Rome, Gibbon, Macaulay, Becker’s 
Gallus; Dark Ages, Hallam, Guizot, Robertson, Pres- 
cott, Irving; Philosophy of History, Herder, Buckle, 
Comte, Lecky, Mill, Draper; Science, Darwin, Lyell, 
Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Vestiges of Creation, 
Wallace, Tylor, and Lubbock. All the works of the 
above-named authors deserve to be carefully read by 
the student of Universal History, and in them he will 
find references to the original authorities, and to all 
writers of importance on the various subjects treated 
of in this work. As for my religious sentiments, they 
are expressed in opposition to the advice and wishes of 
several literary friends, and of the publisher, who have 
urged me to alter certain passages which they do not 
like, and which they believe will provoke against me 
the anger of the public. Now, as a literary workman, 
I am thankful to be guided by the knowledge of experts, 


xliv AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


and I bow to the decisions of the great public, for whom 
alone I write, whom alone I care to please, and in whose 
broad unbiased judgment I place implicit trust. But in 
the matter of religion, I listen to no remonstrance, I 
acknowledge no decision save that of the divine monitor 
within me. My conscience is my adviser, my audience, 
and my judge. It bade me write as I have written, 
without evasion, without disguise; it bids me to go on 
as I have begun, whatever the result may be. If, there- 
fore, my religious opinions should be condemned, with- 
out a single exception, by every reader of the book, it 
will not make me regret having expressed them, and it 
will not prevent me from expressing them again. It is 
my earnest and sincere conviction that those opinions 
are not only true, but also that they tend to elevate and 
purify the mind. One thing at all events I know, that 
it has done me good to write this book: and, therefore, 
I do not think that it can injure those by whom it will 
be read, 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PAGES 
INTRODUCTION Y : : i : Hs ili-xxxix 
AUTHOR’S PREFACE ; . a é 3 xli-xliv 
TABLE OF CONTENTS . : : i xlv-xlix 


CHAPTER I—WAR (pp. 1-146). 


Eaypt:—The Nile Valley—Its Isolated Condition—Inven- 
tion of the Arts and Sciences—Its Political History 
—Estates of the Realm—Trial of the Dead—Invasion 
of the Hyksos—-Ethiopia—The New Empire—lIts 
Luxury—Its Decline—Conquest by Ethiopia—Re- 
nascence under Phil-Hellene Pharaohs . 1-43 

Western AstA:—Babylonia the Primitive Seat of Western 
Asian Civilization—Assyria the first World-Power— 

Its Overthrow—Its successors, the Median, Chal- 
dwan, and Lydian Kingdoms—Universal Peace— 
Invasion of the Persians 43-50 

THE Perrstans:—Persian Empire described—Its Political 
System—Its Army—Wars with Greece but episodes 
in Persian History 50-56 

Tur Greexs:—Rise of Greece—Its Development and Cul- 
ture—Its Colonies—Egypt its University—Retreat 
of The Ten Thousand—Moral Weakness of Greeks 
—Their Political Dishonesty . 56-74 

Tue Maceponians:—Alexander the Great—His Conquests 
—His Greatness and Wisdom—His Death—Partition 
of the Empire . 74-85 

AtexaNnpria:—Foundation of the City—The Meseum and 
Modern Science—Religious Intolerance of Democracy 
~—Foreign Conquests of Ptolemies—Decline of Egypt 
—Ptolemies’ appeal to Rome . 

Tue PuHmnicians:—Settlement of Phoenicia—Phcenicians 
forced to the Sea—Piracy and Trade—Pheenician 
Colonies—Pheenicians supplanted by Greeks—Rise 
of Carthage 95-100 

CARTHAGE AND ROME: —Description of North Africa— 
Foundation of Carthage—Its Colonies—Partition of 
Sicily—Rise of Rome—Its slow advance Southwards 
—The First Punic War—Spendius and Matho— 
Hamilcar’s Conquest of Spain—Second Punic War— 
Death of Hannibal—Masinissa and Cato—Third 


xlvi TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Punic War—Fall of Carthage . 100-137 
Roman Arrica:—Africa a Roman Province—Gradually 

drained by Romans—Division of the KEmpire— 

Invasion of the Vandals—Reconquest by Belisarius 137-144 
Tue Arass:—Imperfect nature of Roman Conquest of 

Africa—Union of Berbers and Arabs—War chief 

agent of Civilization . F : : 144-146 


CHAPTER II—RELIGION (pp. 147-265). 


Tue NaruraL History or Revicron:—Animism—Dreams 

and Ghosts—Reality of Religion to Savage—Birth 

of Morality—Creeds of Learned and Ignorant—Folly 

of Prayer—Effect of Geography on Creed . 147-163 
Tue IsraeLites:—Abraham a Bedouin—Effect of Egypt on 

Israelites—Moses and his Visions—The Exodus— 

The Theocracy—Establishment of Monarchy— 

Solomon’s Ephemeral Empire—Its Overthrow and 

Division 4 ; ; , 163-177 
Tue Jsws:—lIntolerance of Jehovah-worship—ZJosiah’s 

Religious Reform—Dispersion dates from Captivity 

—Intolerance of Restored Jews—The Maccabees— 

Roman Conquest and Herod—Sadducees and Phari- 

sees—Messianic Expectations—Jesus in Jerusalem 177-192 
Tue PropHets:—Prophets common among _ illiterate— 

Jewish prophet half angel half beast—Prophet 

opposed to Priest—Martyrdom his natural end 192-197 
Tue Cuaracrer or Jesus:—Jesus resembles best of prophets 

—But might have become Persecutor—His sweeping 

condemnation of Rich—His Appeals to Self-Interest 

of Hearers—His Abuse of Pharisees—Lawfully con- 

demned under Mosaic Law . 197-203 
THe CHRISTIANS :—Christianity due to Greek Jews—First 

spread by Jews—Freemasonry of Ghetto—Daily Life 

in Rome—The Catacombs—Postponement of Millen- 

nium—Missionary Fervour of Christians—Christians 

denounced as Atheists—Aversion of Philosophers 

from Christianity—Christianity a religion of the Peo- 

ple—Division of Empire and Rise of Sects . 203-222 
AraBIA:—Parthian. Empire—Sassanides and Zoroastrian 

Revival—Their Wars with Byzantines—Victory of 

Heraclius—Description of Arabia—A Land of Refuge 


—Conversion of Abyssinia : : 222-228 
Mecca:—Description of Mecca—Dominance of Family in 
State—Its Early Religion—Its Puritans ; 228-231 


Tue CuHaracteR oF Manomet:—Early Life of Mahomet 
—His Visions—Hostility of Meccans towards—The 
Flight—Change of Character at Medina—Becomes 
Warrior and Voluptuary—His Success : 231-240 
DescripTion or ArricA:—Mahomet’s Successors—Unity of 
Islam—The Tableland of Africa—Its Aborigines 


TABLE OF CONTENTS xlvil 


Bushmen—Negroes differentiated by Climate—Life 

in the Bush—Witchcraft and Superstition—Benefits 

of Islam—The Niger Basin—The Tuaricks and their 

Conquests ‘ 240-255 
Tum MAnoMetans in Centrat Arrica:—Introduction of 

the Camei—Moorish Conquest of Soudan—Spread 

of Islam through Central Africa—The Foulas—The 

Pilgrimage to Mecca—Its Corruption—Reform of 

Danfodio and Foula Conquest—Future of Soudan 255-265 


CHAPTER WI—LIBERTY (pp. 266-352). 


ANCIENT Evurope:—Gauls and Germans—Superior Civiliza- 
tion of Gauls—Roman Conquest makes them 


Unwarlike : 266-268 
Tue German Invaston:—German Conquest of Gaul— 
Foundation of Castle System . A 268-269 


Tue Castie:—Europe divided among Castles—Their 
Drawbacks and Advantages—The Lady—Rise of 
Chivalry—Condition of the Serf—Castle centre of 


Religion and Sports 269-273 
Tue Town :—Rise of Town—Guilds and Artizans—Revival 
of Law—Asylum for Landless Men . 273-276 


Tue Cuurcy:—Rome the centre of Western Christendom 

—Its Clergy denationalized—Pilgrimage to Holy 

Land—The Crusades—Alliance of Crown and Town 

—Its Results : 4 276-281 
VENICE:—-Origin of Venice—Navigation and Commerce— 

Its Foreign Trade—Its Wealth and Luxury—lIts 

Downfall . . 281-285 
Aras Spain :—Benefits of the Moorish Conquest to Spain 

—Spread of Education—Tolerance of Caliphs— - 

Christian Contumacy—Gradual Decline of Moslem 

Power—Ferdinand and Isabella 285-290 
Tue Porrucurse Drscovertes:—Prince Henry the Navigator 

—Discovery of Madeira—Priestly Opposition—Gold 

of Africa reaches Europe—Discovery of Guinea— 

Columbus’ Voyages—Covilham’s Journey from Egypt 

to India—Prester John—Vasco da Gama—Portuguese 

in Africa—Their Cruelty 290-305 
Tue Suave Trape:—West Africa Preserve | of Tuarick 

Slave Hunters—Blacks always in request as Slaves 

—Description of West Coast—European Traders in 

ancient times all Slave Dealers 305-311 
Azouition IN Evrope:—Re-enslavement of Middle Class 

after Renascence—Invention of Printing—Voltaire 

and Encyclopedists—Slavery in England—Granville 

Sharp and the Abolitionists—Clarkson and Wilber- 

force—Pitt’s Proposal to France for Abolition of 

Slavery—Outbreak of French Revolution—Abolition 

in England and Sentimental Squadron n 311-330 


xlvili TABLE OF CONTENTS 


ABOLITION IN AMERICA:—The Union of the American 
States—Jealousy of North and South—Slavery recog- 
nized by Constitution—Slave-grown Cotton Staple 
of Southern Prosperity—Garrison and Abolition Agi- 
tation—War of Secession—Abolition and its Bless+ 


ings—Future of the Negro—And of Africa. 330-346 


MATERIALS oF Human History:—All written documents 
relatively recent—Language and Archeology—Ana- 
tomical evidence of origin of Man—Man’s Mind 
like that of Lower Animals—Progress not Decadence 
—Hope of Future : " : : 


CHAPTER IV—INTELLECT (p. 353 to end). 


AnrIMaL Periop or tHe EartH:—The Primeval Nebula— 
Cooling of the Earth—Sun the source of all Life— 
Appearance of Land—Monocellular Creatures—Divi- 
sion and Reproduction—Amphibious Animals—The 
Struggle for Life—Adaptation to Environment the 
Law of Progress—The Missing Links—Evolution of 
Mind—Birth of Consciousness—Experience Teaches 
—Evolution of Love—Evolution of Family—Animal 


346-352 


Communities 353-374 


Origin AND Earty History or Man:—Man’s Ape-like 
Precursor—Invention of Speech—Language and 
Combination—Invention of Fire—Of Agriculture— 
Shepherds and Nomads—Belief in Ghosts—Religion 
a Bond of Union—All Law once Municipal—Inven- 
tion of Priesthood—The Oath—Science and Morality 
The gifts of the Priesthood—God made in Image of 
Man—Curiosity and Imitation—Origin of Art—Music 
the Language of Love—Secondary Laws alone within 
our reach—Affections as means of development— 
Gradual Progress of Morality—Its Future—Neces- 


sity, Love of Approbation, Habit ; 374-414 


SuMMarY oF UniversaL History:—From Nebula to Na- 
tion—Periods of War, Religion, and Liberty— 
Period of Intellect foreshadowed—The Old World: 
China, India, Babylonia and Egypt the elemental 
Lands—Importance of Persian Conquest-—Services of 
the Greeks to Liberty—Rome the first Organized 
Power—Parallel between Rome and China—Bud- 
dhism at first democratic—Later a State Church— 
Local Character of Pagan Religions—Judaism an 
exception—Christianity goes through same _trans- 
formation as Buddhism—The Age of the Rosary— 
Revival of Learning—The Search for Books—The 
Reformation and the French Revolution—Slavery 
of Lower Classes flaw in Greek and Chinese Civili- 


zation—Gratitude due to the Past : 414-448 


Tue Future of tHe Human Race:—Nature works by 


TABLE OF CONTENTS xlix 


provisional expedients rather than by fixed laws— 
Instances of the use of War—Of Religion—Of 
Inequality of Conditions—Folly of Socialism—Gov- 
ernment of England nearly Perfect—Better than that 
of America—America more prosperous than England 
from superior Natural Advantages—Science can re- 
produce these advantages in England—The Conquest 
of Nature—Three Inventions of the Future of Su- 
preme Importance:—Better Motive Power than 
Steam, Aerial Navigation, a Chemical Food—Their 
Results : ‘ ‘ : : 4 448-461 
THE RELIGION OF REASON AND Love:—Our Relations to 
God—Popular theory of Creator—Its Folly— 
Creator cannot be at once Omnipotent and Benevo- 
lent—Waste of Creation—God’s Character Inscruta- 
ble to Man—Human Race an Organism—Thesis as 
to Worship, Prayer, Immortality of Soul, and Future 
State—Christianity now hurtful to Civilization— 
Some objections to this position considered—The 
Unitarian Christian Objection—The Deist Objection 
—Overthrow of Christianity the Lesser Evil—lIts 
Bad Morality—Its Selfish Ideals—Religious Position 
of writer stated—Perfectibility of Human Race— 
Its Duty—The Church of the Future—Increase of 
Virtue—End of the Martyrdom of Man : 461-485 


aoesaatb bor 4 
ont ‘onda WER, ok GO) 
“te te PPA wey iS 
‘unprageah ohh fiona t 
goannas ea 

AT cha cag Prin 

ey ‘evant l Y, ay i 

Bt east paiva ag 

“eid Hie vd. ga wagon fale vf 
y ee | Hey tu 
Tie, Sew Tov yaangied hi 


5 eet al a Ruy a his sede 





CHAPTER I. 
WAR. 


Tue land of Egypt is six hundred miles long, and is 
bounded by two ranges of naked limestone hills which 
sometimes approach, and sometimes retire from each 
other, leaving between them an average breadth of 
seven miles. On the north they widen and disappear, 
giving place to a marshy meadow plain which extends 
to the Mediterranean Coast. On the south they are 
no longer of limestone, but of granite; they narrow to 
a point; they close in till they almost touch; and 
through the mountain gate thus formed, the river Nile 
leaps with a roar into the valley, and runs due north 
towards the sea. 

In the winter and spring it rolls a languid stream 
through a dry and dusty plain. But in the summer an 
extraordinary thing happens. The river grows troubled 
and swift; it turns red as blood, and then green; it 
rises, it swells, till at length overflowing its banks, it 
covers the adjoining lands to the base of the hills on 
either side. The whole valley becomes a lake from 
which the villages rise like islands, for they are built on 
artificial mounds. 

This catastrophe was welcomed by the Egyptians 
with religious gratitude and noisy mirth. When their 
fields had entirely disappeared they thanked the gods 
and kept their harvest-home. The tax-gatherers meas- 
ured the water as if it were grain, and announced what 
the crops and the budget of the next year would be. 
Gay barges with painted sails conveyed the merry hus- 

1 


oy THE WATER HARVEST 


bandmen from village to village, and from fair to fair. 
It was then that they had their bull fights, their boat 
tournaments, their wrestling matches, their bouts at 
single-stick and other athletic sports. It was then that 
the thimble-riggers and jack-puddings, the blind harp- 
ers and nigger minstrels from Central Africa amused 
the holiday-hearted crowd. It was then that the old 
people sat over draughts and dice-box in the cosy shade, 
while the boys played at mora, or pitch and toss, and the 
girls at a game of ball, with forfeits for the one who 
missed a catch. It was then that the house-father 
bought new dolls for the children, and amulets, or gold 
ear-rings, or necklaces of porcelain bugles for the wife. 
It was then that the market stalls abounded with joints 
of beef and venison, and with geese hanging down in 
long rows, and with chickens hatched by thousands un- 
der heaps of dung. Salted quails, smoked fish, date 
sweetmeats, doora cakes and cheese; leeks, garlic, cu- 
cumber and onions; lotus seeds mashed in milk, roasted 
stalks of papyrus, jars of barley beer and palm wine, 
with many other kinds of food were sold in unusual 
plenty at that festive time. 

It was then also that the white robed priests, bearing 
the image of a god, and singing hymns, marched with 
solemn procession to the water side, and cast in a sac- 
rifice of gold. For the water which had thus risen was 
their life. Egypt is by nature a rainless desert, which 
the Nile, and the Nile only, converts into a garden 
every year. 

Far far away in the distant regions of the south, in 
the deep heart of Africa, lie two inland seas. These 
are the headwaters of the Nile; its sources are in the 
sky. For the clouds, laden with waters collected out of 
many seas, sail to the African equator, and there pour 
down a ten months’ rain. This ocean of falling water 
is received on a region sloping towards the north, and is 
conveyed by a thousand channels to the vast rocky cis- 


THE SOURCES OF THE NILE 3 


terns which form the Speke and Baker Lakes. They, 
filled and bursting, cast forth the Nile, and drive it from 
them through a terrible and thirsty land. The hot air 
lies on the stream and laps it as it fows. The parched 
soil swallows it with open pores, but ton after ton of 
water is supplied from the gigantic reservoirs behind, 
and so it is enabled to cross that vast desert, which 
spreads from the latitude of Lake Tchad to the borders 
of the Mediterranean Sea. 

The existence of the Nile is due to the Nyanza Lakes 
alone, but the inundation of the river has a distinct and 
separate cause. In that phenomenon the lakes are not 
concerned. 

Between the Nile and the mouth of the Arabian Gulf 
are situated the Highlands of Abyssinia, rising many 
thousand feet above the level of the sea, and intercept- 
ing the clouds of the Indian Ocean in their flight to- 
wards the north. From these mountains, as soon as the 
rainy season has set in, two great rivers come thunder- 
ing down their dried up beds, and rush into the Nile. 
Their main stream is now forced impetuously along; 
in the Nubian desert its swelling waters are held in be- 
tween walls of rock; as soon as it reaches the low-lying 
lands of Egypt it naturally overflows. 

The Abyssinian tributaries do even more than this. 
The waters of the White Nile are transparent and pure; 
but the Atbara and Blue Nile bring down from their 
native land a black silt, which the flood strews over the 
whole valley as a kind of top-dressing or manure. On 
that rich and unctuous mud, as soon as the waters have 
retired, the natives cast their seed. Then their labours 
are completed; no changes of weather need afterwards 
be feared, no anxious looks are turned towards the sky; 
sunshine only is required to fulfil the crop, and in Egypt 
the sun is never covered by a cloud. 

Thus, were it not for the White Nile, the Abyssinian 
rivers would be drunk up by the desert; and were it not 


4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LEISURE 


for the Abyssinian rivers, the White Nile would be a 
barren stream. The River is created by the rains of 
the equator; the Land by the tropical rains condensed 
in one spot by the Abyssinian mountain pile. 

In that fair Egyptian valley, fattened by a foreign 
soil, brightened by eternal sunshine, watered by ter- 
restial rain, the natives were able to obtain a year’s food 
in return for a few days’ toil, and so were provided with 
that wealth of time which is essential for a nation’s 
growth. 

A people can never rise from low estate as long as 
they are engrossed in the painful struggle for daily 
bread. On the other hand, leisure alone. is not suffi- 
cient to effect the self-promotion of men. The savage 
of the primeval forest burns down a few trees every year, 
his women raise an easy crop from the ashes which 
mingle with the soil. He basks all day in the sunshine, 
or prostrates himself in his canoe with his arms behind 
his head and a fishing line tied to his big toe. When 
the meat-hunger comes upon him he takes up bow and 
arrow and goes for a few days into the bush. His life 
is one long torpor, with spasms of activity. Century 
follows century, but he does not change. Again, the 
shepherd tribes roam from pasture to pasture: their 
flocks and herds yield them food and dress, and houses 
of hair, as they call their tents. They have little work 
to do: their time is almost entirely their own. They 
pass long hours in slow conversation, in gazing at the 
heavens, in the sensuous passive oriental reverie. The 
intellectual capacities of such men are by no means 
to be despised, as those who have lived among them 
are aware. They are skilful interpreters of nature’s lan- 
guage, and of the human heart: they compose beautiful 
poems; their religion is simple and sublime; yet time 
passes on, and they do not advance. The Arab sheik 
of the present day lives precisely as Abraham did three 


AGRICULTURAL MONOGAMY 5 


thousand years ago; the Tartars of central Asia are the 
Scythians whom Herodotus described. 

It is the first and indispensable condition of human 
progress that a people shall be married to a single land: 
that they shall wander no more from one region to an- 
other, but remain fixed and faithful to their soil. Then 
if the Earth-wife be fruitful, she will bear them children 
by hundreds and by thousands; and then, Calamity will 
come and teach them by torture to invent. 

The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest 
of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in 
their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits; and 
happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always 
been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have re- 
mained in the semi-savage state. 

It may appear strange that Egypt should have suf- 
fered from famine, for there was no country in the 
ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. 
Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; 
the ditches and hollows which were filled by the over- 
flowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nour- 
ishing aquatic plants; and on the borders of the desert, 
thick groves of date palms which love a neutral soil, 
embowered the villages, and formed live granaries of 
fruit. : 

But however plentiful food may be in any country, 
the population of that country, as Malthus discovered, 
will outstrip it in the long run. If food is unusually 
cheap, population will increase at an unusually rapid 
rate, and there is no limit to its ratio of increase; no 
limit, that is to say, except disease and death. On the 
other hand, there is a limit to the amount of food that 
can be raised, for the basis of food is land, and land is 
a fixed quantity. Unless some discovery is made, by 
means of which provisions may be manufactured with 
as much facility as children, the whole earth will some 
day be placed in the same predicament as the island in 


6 GOD MADE ALL MEN EQUAL 


which we live, which has outgrown its food-producing 
power, and is preserved from starvation only by means 
of foreign corn. 

At the time we speak of Egypt was irrigated by the 
Nile in a natural, and therefore imperfect manner. Cer- 
tain tracts were overflooded, others were left completely 
dry. The valley was filled with people to the brim. 
When it was a good Nile, every ear of corn, every bunch 
of dates, every papyrus stalk and lotus root, was pre- 
engaged. There was no waste and no surplus store. 
But sometimes a bad Nile came. 

The bread of the people depended on the amount of 
inundation, and that on the tropical rains, which vary 
more than is usually supposed. If the rainy season in 
the Abyssinian highlands happened to be slight, the 
river could not pay its full tribute of earth and water 
to the valley below; and if the rainfall was unusually 
severe, houses were swept away, cattle were drowned, 
and the water, instead of returning at the usual time, 
became stagnant on the fields. In either case, famine 
and pestilence invariably ensued. The plenty of ordi- 
nary years, like a baited trap, had produced a luxuriance 
of human life, and the massacre was proportionately 
Severe. Encompassed by the wilderness, the unfortu- 
nate natives were unable to escape; they died in heaps; 
the valley resembled a field of battle; each village be- 
came a charnel-house; skeletons sat grinning at street 
corners, and the winds clattered among dead men’s 
bones. A few survivors lingered miserably through the 
year, browsing on the thorny shrubs of the desert, and 
sharing with the vultures their horrible repast. 

God made all men equal is a fine-sounding phrase, 
and has also done good service in its day; but it is 
not a scientific fact. On the contrary, there is nothing 
so certain as the natural inequality of men. Those who 
outlive hardships and sufferings which fall on all alike 
owe their existence to some superiority, not only of 


FAMINE THE MOTHER OF ASTRONOMY 7 


body, but of mind. It will easily be conceived that 
among such superior minded men there would be some 
who, stimulated by the memory of that which was past, 
and by the fear of that which might return, would strain 
to the utmost their ingenuity to control and guide the 
fickle river which had hitherto sported with their lives. 

We shall not attempt to trace out their inventions 
step by step. Humble in its beginnings, slow in its im- 
provements, the art or science of Hydraulics was finally 
mastered by the Egyptians. They devised a system of 
dikes, reservoirs, and lock-canals, by means of which the 
excessive waters of a violent Nile were turned from the 
fields and stored up to supply the wants of a dry year; 
thus also the precious fluid was conveyed to tracts of 
land lying above the level of the river, and was distrib- 
uted over the whole valley with such precision that each 
lot or farm received a just and equal share. Next, as 
the inundation destroyed all landmarks, Surveying be- 
came a necessary art in order to settle the disputes 
which broke out every year. And as the rising of the 
‘waters was more and more carefully observed, it was 
found that its commencement coincided with certain 
aspects of the stars. This led to the study of Astronomy 
and the discovery of the solar year. Agriculture became 
mathematical art: it was ascertained that so many 
feet of water would yield so many quarters of corn; 
and thus, before a single seed was sown, they could 
count up the harvest as correctly as if it had already 
been gathered in. 

A natural consequence of all this was the separation 
of the inventor class, who became at first the counsellors, 
and afterwards the rulers of the people. But while the 
‘men of mind were battling with the forces of Nature, 
a contest of another kind was also going on. Those 
who dwell on the rich banks of a river flowing through 
desert lands are always liable to be attacked by the 
wandering shepherd hordes who resort to the waterside 


8 CRUELTY THE NURSE OF CIVILIZATION 


in summer, when the wilderness pasture is dried up. 
There is nothing such tribes desire better than to con- 
quer the corn-growing people of the river lands, and to 
make them pay a tribute of grain when the crops are 
taken in. The Egyptians, as soon as they had won 
their harvests from the flood, were obliged to defend. 
them, against the robbers of the desert, and out of such 
wars arose a military caste. These allied themselves 
with the intellectual caste, who were also priests, for 
among the primitive nations religion and science were 
invariably combined. In this manner the bravest and 
wisest of the Egyptians rose above the vulgar crowd, 
and the nation was divided into two great classes, the 
rulers and the ruled. 

Then oppression continued the work which war and 
famine had begun. The priests announced, and the 
armies executed, the divine decrees. The people were 
reduced to servitude. The soldiers discovered the gold 
and emerald mines of the adjoining hills, and filled their 
dark recesses with chained slaves and savage overseers. 
They became invaders; they explored distant lands with 
the spear. Communications with Syria and the fra- 
grant countries at the mouth of the Red Sea, first opened 
by means of war, were continued by means of commerce. 
Foreign produce became an element of Egyptian life. 
The privileged classes found it necessary to be rich. 
Formerly the priests had merely salted the bodies of the 
dead; now a fashionable corpse must be embalmed at 
an expense of two hundred and fifty pounds, with 
asphalt from the Dead Sea and spices from the Somali 
groves; costly incense must be burnt on the altars of 
the gods; aristocratic heads must recline on ivory stools; 
fine ladies must glitter with gold ornaments and precious 
stones, and must be served by waiting-maids and pages 
with woolly hair and velvety black skins. War and 
agriculture were no longer sufficient to supply these 
patrician wants. It was no longer sufficient that the 


JESUITICAL NATURE 9 


people should feed on dates and the coarse doura bread, 
while the wheat which they raised was sold by their 
masters for gew-gaws and perfumes. Manufactures 
were established; slaves laboured at a thousand looms; 
the linen goods of Egypt became celebrated throughout 
the world. Laboratories were opened; remarkable dis- 
coveries were made. The Egyptian priests distilled 
brandy and sweet waters. They used the blow-pipe, 
and were far advanced in the chemical processes of art. 
They. fabricated glass mosaics, and counterfeited pre- 
cious stones and porcelain of exquisite transparency and 
delicately blended hues. With the fruits of these inven- 
tions they adorned their daily life, and attracted into 
Egypt the riches of other lands. 

Thus when Nature selects a people to endow them 
with glory and with wealth her first proceeding is to 
massacre their bodies, her second, to debauch their 
minds. She begins with famine, pestilence, and war; 
next, force and rapacity above; chains and slavery be- 
low. She uses evil as the raw material of good; though 
her aim is always noble, her earliest means are base 
and cruel. But, as soon as a certain point is reached, 
she washes her black and bloody hands, and uses agents 
of a higher kind. Having converted the animal instinct 
of self-defence into the ravenous lust of wealth and 
power, that also she transforms into ambition of a pure 
and lofty kind. At first knowledge is sought only for 
the things which it will buy, the daily bread indis- 
pensable to life; and those trinkets of body and mind 
which vanity demands. Yet those low desires do not 
always and entirely possess the human soul. Wisdom is 
like the heiress of the novel who is at first courted only 
for her wealth, but whom the fortune-hunter learns aft- 
erwards to love for herself alone. 

At first sight there seems little in the arts and sci- 
ences of Egypt which cannot be traced to the enlight- 
ened selfishness of the priestly caste. For, in the earlier 


10 LABOUR LOVED 


times it was necessary for the priests to labour unceas-- 
ingly, to preserve the power which they had usurped. 
It was necessary to overawe not only the people who 
worked in the fields, but their own dangerous allies, the 
military class; to make religion not only mysterious, 
but magnificent: not only to predict the precise hour of 
the rising of the waters, or the eclipses of the moon, but. 
also to adopt and nurture the fine arts, to dazzle the 
public with temples, monuments, and paintings. Above: 
all, it was necessary to prepare a system of government. 
which should keep the labouring classes in subjection,, 
and yet stimulate them to labour indefatigably for the 
state, which should strip them of all the rewards of in-- 
dustry and yet keep that industry alive. Expediency 
will therefore account for much that the Egyptian in- 
tellect produced; but it certainly will not account for 
all. The invention of hieroglyphics is alone sufficient to 
prove that higher motives were at work than mere: 
political calculation and the appetite of gold. For writ- 
ing was an invention which at no time could have added. 
in a palpable manner to the wealth or power of the: 
upper classes, and which yet could not have been fin-- 
ished to a system without a vast expenditure of time 
and toil. It could not have been the work of a single 
man, but of several labouring in the same direction, and. 
in its early beginnings must have appeared as unpracti- 
cal, as truly scientific to them, as the study of solar 
chemistry and the observation of the double stars to us.. 
Besides, the intense and faithful labour which is con- 
spicuous in all the Egyptian works of art could only 
have been inspired by that enthusiasm which belongs. 
to noble minds. 

We may fairly presume that Egypt once possessed. 
its chivalry of the intellect, its heroic age, and that the 
violent activity of thought generated by the love of life,. 
and developed by the love of power was raised to its: 


THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE 11 


full zenith by the passion for art and science, for the 
beautiful and the true. 

At first the Nile valley was divided into a number 
of independent states, each possessing its own corpora- 
tion of priests and soldiers, its own laws and system 
of taxation, its own tutelary god and shrine; but each 
a member of one body, united by the belief in one re- 
ligion, and assembling from time to time to worship the 
national gods in an appointed place. There, according 
to general agreement, ratified by solemn oaths, all feuds 
were suspended, all weapons laid aside. There also, 
under the shelter of the sanctuary, property was secure, 
and the surplus commodities of the various districts 
could be conveniently interchanged. In such a place, 
frequented by vast crowds of pilgrims and traders, a 
great city would naturally arise; and such it seems 
probable was the origin of Thebes. 

But Egypt, which possesses a simple undivided form, 
and which is nourished by one great arterial stream, 
appears destined to be surmounted by a single head, 
and we perceive in the dim dawn of history a revolution 
taking place, and Menes, the Egyptian Charlemagne, 
founding an empire upon the ruins of local govern- 
ments, and inspiring the various tribes with the senti- 
ment of nationality. Thebes remained the sacred city; 
but a new capital, Memphis, was built at the other end 
of the valley, not far from the spot where Cairo now 
stands. 

By degrees the Egyptian empire assumed a consoli- 
dated form. A regular constitution was established and 
a ritual prescribed. The classes were organised in a 
more effective manner, and were not at first too strictly 
fixed. All were at liberty to intermarry, excepting only 
the swineherds, who were regarded as unclean. The 
system of the government became masterly, and the 
servitude of the people became complete. Designs of 
imperial magnitude were accomplished, some of them 


12 THE ESTATES 


gigantic but useless, mere exploits of naked human 
strength; others were structures of true grandeur and 
utility. The valley was adorned with splendid monu- 
ments and temples; colossal statues were erected, which 
rose above the houses, like the towers and spires of our 
cathedral towns. An army of labourers was employed 
against the Nile. The course of the mighty stream 
was altered; its waters were snatched from its bosom, 
and stored up in the Lake Merris, an artificial basin, hol- 
lowed out of an extensive swamp, and thence were con- 
ducted by a system of canals into the neighbouring 
desert, which they changed to smiling fields. For the 
Sahara can always be revived. It is barren only be- 
cause it receives no rain. 

The Empire consisted of three estates; the Monarch, 
the Army, and the Church. There were in theory no 
limits to the power of the king. His authority was 
derived directly from the gods. He was called the Sun; 
he was the head of the religion and the state; he was 
the supreme judge and lawgiver; he commanded the 
army and led it to war. But in reality his power was 
controlled and reduced to mere pageantry by a parlia- 
ment of priests. He was elected by the military class; 
but as soon as he was crowned he was initiated into 
the mysteries and subjected to the severe discipline of 
the holy order. No slave or hireling might approach his 
person: the lords in waiting, with the state parasol, and 
the ostrich feather fans, were princes of the blood; his 
other attendants were invariably priests. The royal 
time was filled and measured by routine: laws were laid 
down in the holy books for the order and nature of his 
occupations. At daybreak he examined and dispatched 
his correspondence; he then put on his robes and at- 
tended divine service in the temple. Extracts were 
read from those holy books which contained the say- 
ings and actions of distinguished men, and these were 
followed by a sermon from the High Priest. He ex- 


ARMY 13 


tolled the virtues of the reigning sovereign, but criticised 
severely the lives of those who had preceded him; a 
post mortem examination to which the king knew that 
he would be subjected in his turn. 

He was forbidden to commit any kind of excess: he 
was restricted to a plain diet of veal and goose, and to 
a measured quantity of wine. The laws hung over him 
day and night; they governed his public and private 
actions; they followed him even to the recesses of his 
chamber, and appointed a set time for the embraces of 
the queen. He could not punish a single person except in 
accordance with the code; the judges took oath before 
the king that they would disobey the king if he ordered 
them to do anything contrary to law. The ministry 
were responsible for the actions of their master, and 
they guarded their own safety. They made it impos- 
sible for him to forfeit that reverence and affection 
which the ignorant and religious always entertain for 
their anointed king. He was adored as a god, when 
living, and when he died he was mourned by the whole 
nation as if each man had lost a well-beloved child. 
During seventy-two days the temples were closed; 
lamentations filled the air: and the people fasted, ab- 
staining from flesh and wine, cooked food, ointments, 
baths, and the company of their wives. 

The Army appears to have been severely disciplined. 
To run twenty miles before breakfast was part of the 
ordinary drill. The amusements of the soldiers were 
athletic sports and martial games. Yet they were not 
merely fighting men: they were also farmers; each war- 
rior received from the state twelve acres of choice land: 
these gave him a solid interest in the prosperity of the 
fatherland and in the maintenance of civil peace. 

The most powerful of the three estates was undoubt- 
edly the Church. In the priesthood were included not 
only the ministers of religion, but also the whole civil 
service and the liberal professions. Priests were the 


14 CHURCH 


royal chroniclers and keepers of the records, the en- 
gravers of inscriptions, physicians of the sick and em- 
balmers of the dead; lawyers and lawgivers, sculptors 
and musicians. Most of the skilled labour of the coun- 
try was under their control. In their hands were the 
linen manufactories and the quarries between the Cat- 
aracts. Even those posts in the army which required a 
knowledge of arithmetic and penmanship were supplied 
by them: every general was attended by young priest 
scribes, with papyrus rolls in their hands and reed pen- 
cils behind their ears. The clergy preserved the mo- 
nopoly of the arts which they had invented; the whole 
intellectual life of Egypt was in them. It was they who, 
with their Nilometers, took the measure of the waters, 
proclaimed good harvests to the people, or bade them 
prepare for hungry days. It was they who studied the 
diseases of the country, compiled a Pharmacopeia, and 
invented the signs which are used in our prescriptions 
at the present day. It was they who judged the living 
and the dead, who enacted laws which extended beyond 
the grave, who issued passports to paradise, or con- 
demned to eternal infamy the memories of men that 
were no more. 

Their power was immense; but it was exercised with 
justice and discretion: they issued admirable laws, and 
taught the people to obey them by the example of their 
own humble, self-denying lives. 

Under the tutelage of these pious and enlightened 
men, the Egyptians became a prosperous, and also a 
highly moral people. The monumental paintings reveal 
their whole life, but we read in them no brutal or licen- 
tious scenes. Their great rivals, the Assyrians, even at 
a later period, were accustomed to impale and flay alive 
their prisoners of war. The Egyptians granted honours 
to those who fought gallantly against them. The pen- 
alty for the murder of a slave was death; this law ex- 
ists without parallel in the dark slavery annals both of 


TRIAL OF THE DEAD 15 


ancient and of modern times. The pardoning power in 
cases of capital offence was a cherished prerogative of 
royalty with them, as with us; and with them also as 
with us, when a pregnant woman was condemned to 
death the execution was postponed until after the birth 
of the guiltless child. It is a sure criterion of the civ- 
ilization of ancient Egypt that the soldiers did not carry 
arms except on duty, and that the private citizens did 
not carry them at all. Women were treated with much 
regard. They were allowed to join their husbands in 
the sacrifices to the gods; the bodies of man and wife 
were united in the tomb. When a party was given, the 
guests were received by the host and hostess seated side 
by side in a large armchair. In the paintings their 
mutual affection is portrayed. Their fond manners, 
their gestures of endearment, the caresses which they 
lavish on their children, form sweet and touching scenes 
of domestic life. 

Crimes could not be compounded as in so many other 
ancient lands by the payment of a fine. The man who 
witnessed a crime without attempting to prevent it, was 
punished as a partaker. The civil laws were admin- 
istered in such a manner that the poor could have re- 
course to them as well as the rich. The judges received 
large salaries that they might be placed above the 
temptation of bribery, and might never disgrace the 
image of Truth which they wore round their necks, sus- 
pended on a golden chain. 

But most powerful of all, to preserve the morality of 
the people by giving a tangible force to public opinion, 
and by impeaching those sins against society which no 
legal code can touch, was that sublime police insti- 
tution, the Trial of the Dead. 

When the corpse had been brought back from the 
embalming house, it was encased in a sycamore coffin 
covered with flowers, placed in a sledge and drawn by 
oxen to the sacred lake. The hearse was followed by 


16 THE PAINTED TOMB 


the relations of the deceased, the men unshorn and 
casting dust upon their heads, the women beating their 
breasts and singing mournful hymns. On the banks 
of the lake sat forty-two judges in the shape of a cres- 
cent; a great crowd was assembled; in the water floated 
a canoe, and within it stood Charon the ferryman 
awaiting the sentence of the chief judge. On the other 
side of the lake lay a sandy plain, and beyond it a range 
of long low hills, in which might be discerned the black 
mouths of the caverns of the dead. 

It was in the power of any man to step forward 
and accuse the departed before the body could be 
borne across. If the charge was held to be proved, 
the body was denied burial in the consecrated ground, 
and the crowd silently dispersed. If a verdict of not 
guilty was returned, the accuser suffered the penalty 
of the crime alleged, and the ceremony took its course. 
The relatives began to sing with praises the biography 
of the deceased; they sang in what manner he had 
been brought up from a child till he came to man’s 
estate, how pious he had been towards the gods; how 
righteous he had been towards men. And if this was 
true, if the man’s life had indeed been good, the crowd 
joined in chorus, clapping their hands and sang back 
in return that he would be received into the glory of 
the just. Then the coffin was laid in the canoe, and 
the silent ferryman plied his oar, and a priest read the 
service of the dead: and the body was deposited in 
the cemetery caves. If he was a man of rank he was 
laid in a chamber of his own, and the sacred artists 
painted on the walls an illustrated catalogue of his pos- 
sessions, the principal occupations of his life, and scenes 
of the society in which he moved. For the priests 
taught, that since life is short and death is long, man’s 
dwelling house is but a lodging, and his eternal habita- 
tion is the tomb. Thus the family vault of the Egyptian 
was his picture gallery, and thus the manners and cus- 


THE CHILDREN OF THE DESERT 17 


toms of this singular people have, like their bodies, been 
preserved through long ages, by means of religious art. 

There are also still existing on the walls of the 
temples, and in the grotto tombs, grand _ historical 
paintings which illuminate the terse chronicles en- 
graved upon the granite. Among these may be 
remarked one subject in particular, which appears to 
have been a favourite with the artist and the public, 
for it again and again recurs. The Egyptians, distin- 
guished always by their smooth faces and shaven heads, 
are pursuing an enemy with long beards and flowing 
robes, who are surrounded by flocks and herds. The 
Egyptians here show no mercy, they appear alive with 
fury and revenge. Sometimes the victor is depicted with 
a scornful air, his foot placed upon the neck of a pros 
trate foe; sometimes he is piercing the body through and 
through with a spear. Certain sandals have also been 
discovered, in which the figure of the same enemy is 
painted on the inner sole, so that the foot trod upon 
the portrait when the sandal was put on. 

Those bearded men had inflicted on Egypt long 
years of dreadful disaster and disgrace. They were the 
Bedouins of the Arabian peninsula; a pastoral race, 
who wandered eternally in a burning land, each tribe 
or clan within an orbit of its own. When they met they 
fought, the women uttering savage cries, and cursing 
their husbands if they retreated from the foe. Accus- 
tomed to struggle to the death for a handful of withered 
grass, or for a little muddy water at the bottom of a 
well, what a rich harvest must Egypt have appeared 
to them! In order to obtain it they were able to sus- 
pend all feuds, to take an oath of alliance, and to unite 
into a single horde. They descended upon their prey 
and seized it at the first swoop. There does not appear 
to have been even one great battle, and this can be 
explained, if as is probable enough, the Egyptians be- 
fore that invasion had never seen a horse. 


18 THE HORSE OF WAR 


The Arab horse, or rather mare, lived in her master’s 
tent, and supped from the calabash of milk, and lay 
down to sleep with the other members of the family. 
She was the playmate of the children; on her the cruel, 
the savage Bedouin lavished the one tender feeling of 
his heart. He treasured up in his mind her pedigree 
as carefully as his own; he composed songs in honour 
of his beloved steed; his friend, his companion, his ally, 
He sang to her of the gazelles which they had hunted 
down, and of the battles which they had fought to- 
gether; for the Arab horse was essentially a beast of 
war. When the signal was given for the charge, when 
the rider loudly yelling, couched his spear, she snorted 
and panted and bounded in the air. With tail raised 
and spreading to the wind, with neck beautifully arched, 
mane flapping, red nostrils dilating, and glaring eyes, 
she rushed like an arrow into the midst of the melée. 
Though covered with wounds she would never turn 
restive or try to escape, but if her master was compelled 
to take to flight she would carry him till she dropped 
down dead. 

It is quite possible that when the mounted army ap- 
peared in the river plain the inhabitants were paralysed 
with fright, and believed them to be fabulous animals, 
winged men. Be that as it may, the conquest was 
speedy and complete; the imperial Memphis was taken; 
Egypt was enslaved; the king, and his family and court, 
were compelled to seek a new home across the sandy 
Seas. 

On the south side of the Nubian desert was the 
land of Ethiopia, the modern Soudan, which had been 
conquered by the Egyptians, and which they used as 
an emporium in their caravan trade with Central Africa 
and the shores of the Red Sea. But it could be reached 
only by means of a journey which is not without danger 
at the present day, and which must have been inex- 


THE TERRIBLE SAHARA 19 


pressibly arduous at a time when the camel had not been 
introduced. 

The Nile, it is true, flows through this desert, and 
joins Ethiopia to Egypt with a silver chain. But from 
the time of its leaving Soudan until it reaches the 
black granite gate which marks the Egyptian frontier, 
it is confined within a narrow, crooked, hollow way. 
Navigation is impossible, for its bed is continually 
broken up by rocks, and the stream is walled in; it 
cannot overflow its banks. The reign of the Sahara 
is uninterrupted, undisturbed. On all sides is the 
desert, the brown shining desert, the implacable waste. 
Above is a ball of fire ascending and descending in a 
steel blue sky; below a dry and scorching sea, which 
the wind ripples into gloomy waves. The air is a 
cloud which rains fire, for it is dim with perpetual 
dust—each molecule a spark. The eye is pained and 
dazzled; it can find no rest. The ear is startled; it 
can find no sound. In the soft and yielding sand the 
footstep perishes unheard; nothing murmurs, nothing 
rustles, nothing sings. This silence is terrible, for it 
conveys the idea of death, and all know that in the 
desert death is not far off. When the elements be- 
come active they assume peculiar and portentous forms. 
If the wind blows hard a strange storm arises; the 
atmosphere is pervaded by a dull and lurid glare; 
pillars of sand spring up as if by magic, and whirl 
round and round in a ghastly and fantastic dance. 
Then a mountain appearing on the horizon spreads 
upward in the sky, and a darkness more dark than 
night falls suddenly upon the earth. To those who 
gasp with swelled tongues and blackened lips in the 
last agonies of thirst, the mirage, like a mocking 
dream, exhibits lakes of transparent water and shady 
trees. But the wells of this desert are scanty, and the 
waters found in them are salt. 

The fugitives concealed the images of the gods, and 


20 THE BLACK COUNTRY 


taking with them the sacred animals, embarked upon 
their voyage of suffering and woe. After many weary 
days they again sighted land: they arrived on the 
shores of Ethiopia, the country of the blacks. Once 
more their eyes were refreshed with green pastures; 
once more they listened to the rustling of the palms, 
and drank the sweet waters of the Nile. Yet soon 
they discovered that it was not their own dear river, 
it was not their own beloved land. In Egypt nature 
was a gentle handmaid; here she was a cruel and 
capricious queen. The sky flashed and bellowed against 
them; the rain fell in torrents, and battered down the 
houses of the Ethiopians, wretched huts like hay-ricks, 
round in body with a cone-shaped roof, built of grass 
and mud. The lowlands changed beneath the flood, 
not into meadows of flowers and fields of waving corn, 
but into a pestilential morass. At the rising of the dog- 
star came a terrible fly which drove even the wild beasts 
from the river banks and destroyed all flocks and herds. 
At that evil season the Egyptian colonists were forced 
to migrate to the forests of the interior, which were 
filled with savage tribes. Here were the Troglodytes 
who lived under ground; an ointment was their only 
dress; their language resembled the hissing of serpents 
and the whistling of bats. Every month they indulged 
in a carouse; every month they opened the veins of their 
sheep and drank of the warm and gurgling blood as 
if it had been delicious wine. They made merry when 
they buried their dead, and, roaring with laughter, cast 
stones upon the corpse until it was concealed from view. 
Here were the root-eaters, the twig-eaters, and the seed- 
eaters, who lived entirely on such wretched kinds of 
food. Here were the elephant-eaters, who, sitting on 
the tops of trees like birds, watched the roads, and when 
they had sighted a herd, crept after it, and hovered 
round it till the sleepy hour of noon arrived. Then they 
selected a -ictim, stole up to it snake-like from behind, 


THE NOBLE SAVAGE 21 


hamstrung the enormous creature with a dexterous cut 
from a sharp sword, and, as it lay helpless on the 
ground, feasted upon morsels of its live and palpitating 
flesh. Here were the locust-eaters, whose harvest was 
a passing swarm; for they lit a smoky fire underneath, 
which made the insects fall like withered leaves: they 
roasted them, pounded them, and made them into cakes 
with salt. The fish-eaters dwelt by the coralline 
borders of the Red Sea; they lived in wigwams thatched 
with sea-weed, with ribs of whales for the rafters and 
the walls. The richest men were those who possessed 
the largest bones. There was no fresh water near the 
shore where they hunted for their food. At stated times 
they went in herds like cattle to the distant river-side, 
and singing to one another discordant songs, lay flat on 
their bellies, and drank till they were gorged. 

Such was the land to which the Pharaohs were exiled. 
In the meantime the Bedouins established a dynasty 
which ruled a considerable time, and is known in hiero- 
glyphic history as that of the Hyksos or Shepherd 
Kings. 

But those barbarians were not domiciled in Egypt. 
They could not breathe inside houses, and could not 
understand how the walls remained upright. The camp 
was their true fatherland. They lived aloof from the 
Egyptians; they did not ally themselves with the 
country gods; they did not teach the people whom they 
had conquered to regard them as the successors of the 
Pharaohs. Their art of government began and ended 
with the collection of a tax. The Shepherd Kings were 
associated in the minds of the Egyptian fellahs, not 
with their ancient and revered religion, not with the 
laws by which they were still governed under their 
local chiefs, but only with the tribute of corn which 
was extorted from them every harvest by the whip. 
The idea of revolution was always present in their 
minds. Misfortune bestowed upon them the ferocious 


22 THE RESTORATION 


virtues of the desert, while the vice of cities crept into 
the Bedouin camp. The invaders became corrupted 
by luxurious indolence and sensual excess, till at length 
a descendant of the Pharaohs raised an army in 
Ethiopia and invaded Egypt. The uprising was general, 
and the Arabs were driven back into their own harsh 
and meagre land. 

The period which followed the Restoration is the 
most brilliant in Egyptian history. The expulsion of 
the Bedouins excited an enthusiasm which could not 
be contained within the narrow valley of the Nile. 
Egypt became not only an independent but a conquer- 
ing power. Her armies overran Asia to the shores of 
the Euxine and of the Caspian Sea. Her fleets swept 
over the Indian Ocean to the mud-stained shallows at 
the Indus mouth. On the monuments we may read the 
proud annals of those campaigns. We see the Egyptian 
army, with its companies of archers shooting from the 
ear like the Englishmen of old; we see their squadrons 
of light and heavy chariots of war, which skilfully skir- 
mished or heavily charged the dense masses of the foe; 
we see their remarkable engines for besieging fortified 
towns; their scaling ladders, their movable towers, and 
their shield-covered rams. We see the Pharaoh return- 
ing in triumph, his car drawn by captive kings, and a 
long procession of prisoners bearing the productions of 
their respective lands. The nature and variety of those 
trophies sufficiently prove how wide and distant the 
Egyptian conquests must have been; for among the ani- 
mals that figure in the triumph are the brown bear, the 
baboon, the Indian elephant, and the giraffe. Among 
the prisoners are negroes of Soudan in aprons of bull’s 
hides, or in wild beast skins with the tails hanging down 
behind. They carry ebony, ivory, and gold; their chiefs 
are adorned with leopard robes and ostrich feathers, 
as they are at the present day. We see also men from 
some cold country of the north with blue eyes and yel- 


PHARAOH TRIUMPHANT 23 


low hair, wearing light dresses and long-fingered gloves; 
while others clothed like Indians are bearing beautiful 
vases, rich stuffs, and strings of precious stones. 

When the kings came back from their campaigns, 
they built temples of the yellow and rose-tinted sand- 
stone, with obelisks of green granite, and long avenues 
of sphinxes, to commemorate their victories and im- 
mortalise their names. They employed prisoners of war 
to erect these memorials of war; it became the fashion 
to boast that a great structure had been raised without 
a single Egyptian being doomed to work. By means of 
these victories the servitude of the lower classes was 
mitigated for a time, and the wealth of the upper classes 
was enormously increased. The conquests, it is true, 
were not permanent; they were merely raids on a large 
scale. But in very ancient times, when seclusion and 
suspicion formed the foreign policy of States, and when 
national intercourse was scarcely known, invasion was 
often the pioneer of trade. The wealth of Egypt was 
not derived from military spoil, which soon dissolves, 
however large it may appear, but from the new markets 
opened for their linen goods. 

It is certain that the riches contained in the country 
were immense. The house of an Egyptian gentleman 
was furnished in an elegant and costly style. The cab- 
inets, tables, and chairs were beautifully carved, and 
were made entirely of foreign woods; of ebony from 
Ethiopia, of a kind of mahogany from India, of deal 
from Syria, or of cedar from the heights of Lebanon. 
The walls and ceilings were painted in gorgeous patterns 
similar to those which are now woven into carpets. 
Every sitting room was adorned with a vase of per- 
fumes, a flower-stand and an altar for unburnt offerings. 
The house was usually one storey high: but the roof 
was itself an apartment sometimes covered, but always 
open at the sides. There the house-master would ascend 
in the evening to breathe the cool wind, and to watch 


24 AN EGYPTIAN COUNTRY HOUSE 


the city waking into life when the heat was past. The 
streets swarmed and hummed with men; the river was 
covered with gilded gondolas gliding by. And when 
the sudden night had fallen, lamps flashed and danced 
below; from the house-yards came sounds of laughter 
and the tinkling of castanets; from the stream came 
the wailing music of the boatmen and the soft splash- 
ing of the lazy oar. 

The Egyptian grandee had also his villa or country 
house. Its large walled garden was watered by a canal 
communicating with the Nile. One side of the canal 
was laid out in a walk shaded by trees; the leafy syca- 
more, the acacia with its yellow blossoms, and the dowm 
or Theban palm. In the centre of the garden was a 
vineyard, the branches being trained over trellis work 
so as to form a boudoir of green leaves with clusters of 
red grapes glowing like pictures on the walls. Beyond 
the vineyard, at the further end of the garden, stood a 
summer house or kiosk; in front of it a pond which was 
covered with the broad leaves and blue flowers of the 
lotus and in which water fowl played. It was also 
stocked with fish which the owner amused himself by 
spearing; or sometimes he angled for them as he sat on 
his camp stool. Adjoining this garden were the stables 
and coach houses, and a large park in which gazelles 
were preserved for coursing. The Egyptian gentry were 
ardent lovers of the chase. They killed wild ducks with 
throw sticks, made use of decoys, and trained cats to 
retrieve. They harpooned hippopotami in the Nile; 
they went out hunting in the desert with lions trained 
like dogs. They were enthusiastic pigeon fanciers, and 
had many different breeds of dogs. Their social en- 
joyments were not unlike our own. Young ladies in 
Egypt had no croquet; but the gentle sport of archery 
was known amongst them. They had also boating 
parties on the Nile, and water pic-nics beneath the 
shady foliage of the Egyptian bean. They gave dinners, 


AN EGYPTIAN DINNER PARTY 25 


to which, as in all civilized countries, the fair sex were 
invited. The guests arrived for the most part in palan- 
quins, but the young men of fashion drove up to the 
door in their cabs, and usually arrived rather late. Each 
guest was received by a cluster of servants who took off 
his sandals, gave him water to wash his hands, anointed 
and perfumed him, presented him with a bouquet, and 
offered him some raw cabbage to increase his appetite 
for wine, a glass of which was taken before dinner—the 
sherry and bitters of antiquity. 

The gentlemen wore wigs and false beards: their 
hands were loaded with rings. The ladies wore their 
own hair plaited in a most elaborate manner, the result 
of many hours between their little bronze mirrors, and 
the skilful fingers of their slaves. Their eyelashes were 
pencilled with the antimonial powder, their finger nails 
tinged with the henna’s golden juice—fashions older 
than the Pyramids, and which still govern the women 
of the Hast. 

The guests met in the dining room, and grace was 
said before they sat down. They were crowned with 
garlands of the lotus, the violet and the rose; the florists 
of Egypt were afterwards famous in Rome. A band 
of musicians played during the repast on the harp, the 
lyre, the flute, and the guitar. Some of the servants 
carried round glass decanters of wine, encircled with 
flowers, and various dishes upon trays. Others fanned 
the porous earth-jars which contained the almond- 
flavoured water of the Nile. Others burnt Arabian 
incense or flakes of sweet-scented wood to perfume the 
air. Others changed the garlands of the guests as soon 
as they began to fade. Between the courses dwarfs and 
deformed persons skipped about before the company 
with marvellous antics and contortions; jugglers and 
gymnasts exhibited many extraordinary feats; girls 
jumped through hoops, tossed several balls into the air 
after the manner of the East, and performed dances 


26 DECLINE OF EGYPT 


after the manner of the West. Strange as it may ap- 
pear, the pirouette was known to the Egyptians three 
thousand years ago, and stranger still, their ballet girls 
danced it in lighter clothing than is worn by those who 
now grace the operatic boards. At the end of the repast 
a mummy, richly painted and gilded, was carried round 
by a servant, who showed it to each guest in turn, and 
said, “Look on this, drink and enjoy thyself, for such as 
it is now so thou shalt be when thou art dead.” So 
solemn an injunction was not disregarded, and the din- 
ner often ended as might be expected from the manner 
in which it was begun. The Hogarths of the period 
have painted the young dandy being carried home by 
his footmen without his wig; while the lady in her own 
apartment is showing unmistakable signs of the same 
disorder. 

But we must leave these pleasant strolls in the bye- 
paths of history and return to the broad and beaten 
road. The vast wealth and soft luxury of the New 
Empire undermined its strength. It became apparent 
to the Egyptians themselves that the nation was ener- 
vated and corrupt, a swollen pampered body from which 
all energy and vigour had for ever fled. A certain 
Pharaoh commanded a curse to be inscribed in one of 
the temples against the name of Menes, who had first 
seduced the Egyptians from the wholesome simplicity 
of early times. Filled with a spirit of prophecy the 
king foresaw his country’s ruin, which, indeed was near 
at hand, for though he himself was buried within the 
Pyramids in peace, his son and successor was compelled 
to hide in the marshes from a foreign foe. 

To the same cause may be traced the ruin and the 
fall, not only of Egypt, but of all the powers of the 
ancient world; of Nineveh, and Babylon, and Persia; 
of the Macedonian kingdom and the Western Empire. 
‘As soon as those nations became rich they began to 
decay. If this were the fifth century, and we were 


THE LUXURY QUESTION 27 


writing history in the silent and melancholy streets of 
Rome, we should probably propound a theory entirely 
false, yet justified at that time by the universal ex- 
perience of mankind. We should declare that nations 
are mortal like the individuals of which they are com- 
posed; that wealth is the poison, luxury the disease, 
which shortens their existence and dooms them to an 
early death. We should point to the gigantic ruins 
around, to that vast and mouldering body from which 
the soul had fled, moralise about Lucullus and _ his 
thrushes, recount the enormous sums that had been paid 
for a dress, a table, or a child, and assure our Gothic 
pupils that national life and health are only to be 
preserved by contented poverty and simple fare. 

But what has been the history of those barbarians? 
In the dark ages there was no luxury in Europe. It 
was a miserable continent inhabited by robbers, fetish- 
men, and slaves. Even the Italians of the eleventh 
century wore clothes of unlined leather, and had no 
taste except for horses and for shining arms; no pride 
except that of building strong towers for their lairs. 
Man and wife grabbled for their supper from the same 
plate, while a squalid boy stood by them with a torch 
to light their greasy fingers to their mouths. Then 
the India trade was opened; the New World was dis- 
covered; Europe became rich, luxurious, and enlight- 
ened. The sunshine of wealth began first to beam 
upon the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and gradually 
spread towards the North. In the England of Eliza- 
beth it was declared from the pulpit that the introduc- 
tion of forks would demoralise the people and provoke 
the Divine wrath. But in spite of sermons and sump- 
tuary laws Italian luxuries continued to pour in, and 
national prosperity continued to increase. At the pres- 
ent day the income of a nation affords a fair criterion 
of its intellect and also of its strength. It may safely 
be asserted that the art of war will soon be reduced 


28 WEALTH AND PROGRESS 


to a simple question of expenditure and credit, and that 
the largest purse will be the strongest arm. As for 
luxury, a small tradesman at the present day is more 
luxurious than a king in ancient times. It has been 
wisely and wittily remarked that Augustus Cesar had 
neither glass panes to his windows, nor a shirt to his 
back; and, without exaggeration, the luxuries of the 
Roman senators may be compared with that of the West 
Indian Creoles in the last century. The gentleman and 
his lady glittered with jewels; the table and sideboard 
blazed with plate; but the house itself was little better 
than a barn, and the attendants a crowd of dirty, half 
naked slaves who jostled the guests as they performed 
the service of the table and sat down in the verandah 
over the remnants of the soup before they would con- 
descend to go to the kitchen for the fish. 

In the modern world we find luxury the harbinger 
of progress; in the ancient world the omen of decline. 
But how can this be? Nature does not contradict her- 
self; the laws which govern the movements of society 
are as regular and unchangeable as those which govern 
the movements of the stars. 

Wealth is in reality as indispensable to mankind for 
purposes of growth as water to the soil. It is not the 
fault of the water if its natural circulation is inter- 
fered with; if certain portions of the land are drowned 
while others are left completely dry. Wealth in all 
countries of the ancient world was artificially confined 
to a certain class. More than half the area of the 
Greek and Roman world was shut off by slavery from 
the fertilising stream. This single fact is sufficient to 
explain how that old civilisation, in some respects so 
splendid, was yet so one-sided and incomplete. 

But the civilisation of Egypt was less developed still, 
for that country was enthralled by institutions from 
which Greece and Rome happily for them were free. 

It has been shown that the instinct of  self- 


THE INACTIVE AGE 29 


preservation, the struggle for bare life against hostile 
nature first aroused the mental activity of the Egyptian 
priests, while the constant attacks of the desert tribes 
developed the martial energies of the military men. 
Next, the ambition of power produced an equally good 
effect. The priests invented, the warriors campaigned; 
mines were opened, manufactories were founded; a sys- 
tem of foreign commerce was established; sloth was 
abolished by whip and chain; the lower classes were 
saddled, the upper classes were spurred, the nation 
careered gallantly along. Finally, chivalrous ardour, 
intellectual passion, inspired heart and brain; war was 
loved for glory’s sake; the philosopher sought only to 
discover, the artist to perfect. 

And then there came a race of men who, like those 
that inherit great estates, had no incentive to continue 
the work which had been so splendidly begun. In one 
generation the genius of Egypt slumbered, in the next 
it died. Its painters and sculptors were no longer pos- 
sessed of that fruitful faculty with which kindred spirits 
contemplate each others’ works; which not only takes, 
but gives; which produces from whatever it receives; 
which embraces to wrestle, and wrestles to embrace; 
which is sometimes sympathy, sometimes jealousy, 
sometimes hatred, sometimes love, but which always 
causes the heart to flutter, and the face to flush, and 
the mind to swell with the desire to rival and surpass; 
which is sometimes as the emulative awe with which 
Michael Angelo surveyed the Dome that yet gladdens 
the eyes of those who sit on the height of fair Fiesole, 
or who wander afar off in the silver Arno’s vale; which 
is sometimes as that rapture of admiring wrath which 
incited the genius of Byron when his great rival was 
pouring forth masterpiece on masterpiece, with inven- 
tion more varied, though perhaps less lofty, and with 
fancy more luxuriant even than his own. 

The creative period passed away, and the critical 


30 THEOLOGY STOPS THE WAY 


age set in. Instead of working, the artists were con- 
tent to talk. Their admiration was sterile, yet. still 
it was discerning. But the next period was lower still. 
It was that of blind worship and indiscriminating awe. 
The past became sacred, and all that it had produced, 
good and bad, was reverenced alike. This kind of 
idolatry invariably springs up in that interval of lan- 
guor and reaction which succeeds an epoch of produc- 
tion. In the mind-history of every land there is a time 
when slavish imitation is inculcated as a duty, and 
novelty regarded as a crime. But in Egypt the arts and 
sciences were entangled with religion. The result will 
easily be guessed. Egypt stood still, and Theology 
turned her into stone. Conventionality was admired, 
then enforced. The development of the mind was ar- 
rested: it was forbidden to do any new thing. 

In primitive times it is perhaps expedient that ra- 
tional knowledge should be united with religion. It 
is only by means of superstition that a rude people 
can be induced to support, and a robber soldiery to 
respect, an intellectual class. But after a certain time 
this alliance must be ended, or harm will surely come. 
The boy must leave the apartments of the women when 
he arrives at a certain age. Theology is an excellent 
nurse, but a bad mistress for grown up minds. The 
essence of religion is inertia; the essence of science is 
change. It is the function of the one to preserve, it is 
the function of the other to improve. If, as in Egypt, 
they are firmly chained together, either science will ad- 
vance, in which case the religion will be altered; or the 
religion will preserve its purity, and science will congeal. 

The religious ideas of the Egyptians became associ- 
ated with a certain style. It was enacted that the 
human figure should be drawn always in the same man- 
ner, with the same colours, contour, and proportions. 
Thus the artist was degraded to an artizan, and orig- 
inality was strangled in its birth, 


THE BALSAM OF THE SOUL 31 


The physicians were compelled to prescribe for their 
patients according to rules set down in the standard 
works. If they adopted a treatment of their own, and 
the patient did not recover, they were put to death. 
Thus even in desperate cases heroic remedies could not 
be tried, and experiment, the first condition of discovery, 
was disallowed. 

A censorship of literature was not required, for 
literature, in the proper sense of the term, did not exist. 
Writing, it is true, was widely spread. Cattle, clothes, 
and workmen’s tools, were marked with the owners’ 
names. The walls of the temples were covered and 
adorned with that beautiful picture character, more like 
drawing than writing, which could delight the eyes of 
those who were unable to penetrate its sense. Hiero- 
glyphics may be found on everything in Egypt, from the 
colossal statue to the amulet and gem. But the art was 
practised only by the priests, as the painted history 
plainly declares. No books are to be seen in the fur- 
niture of the houses; no female is depicted in the act of 
reading; the papyrus scroll and pencil never appear, 
except in connection with some official act. 

The library at Thebes was much admired. It had 
a blue ceiling speckled with golden stars. Allegorical 
pictures of a religious character and portraits of the 
sacred animals were painted on the walls. Above the 
door was inscribed these words, The Balsam of the Soul. 
Yet this magnificent building contained merely a col- 
lection of prayer books and ancient hymns, some astro- 
nomical almanacks, some works on religious philosophy, 
on medicine, music, and geometry, and the historical 
archives, which were probably little else than a register 
of the names of kings, with the dates of certain in- 
ventions, and a scanty outline of events. 

Even these books, so few in number, were not open 
to all the members of the learned class. They were the 
manuals of the various departments or professions, and 


32 DIVISION OF LABOUR 


each profession stood apart; each profession was even 
subdivided within itself. In medicine and surgery there 
were no general practitioners. There were oculists, 
aurists, dentists, doctors of the head, doctors of the 
stomach, &e., and each was forbidden to invade the ter- 
ritory of his colleagues. This specialist arrangement 
has been highly praised, but it has nothing in common 
with that which has arisen in modern times. 

It is one of the first axioms of medical science that 
no one is competent to treat the diseases of a single 
organ, unless he is competent to treat the diseases of 
the whole frame. The folly of dividing the diseases of 
such organs as the head and stomach, between which 
the most intimate sympathy exists, is evident to the 
unlearned. But the whole structure is united by deli- 
cate white threads, and by innumerable pipes of blood. 
It is scarcely possible for any complaint to influence 
one part alone. The Egyptian, however, was marked 
off, like a chess board, into little squares, and when- 
ever the pain made a move, a fresh doctor had to be 
called in. 

This arrangement was part of a system founded on 
an excellent principle, but carried to absurd excess. It 
is needless to explain that division of labour is highly 
potent in developing skill and economising time. It is 
also clearly of advantage that in an early stage of 
society the son should follow the occupation of the 
father. It is possible that hereditary skill or tastes 
come into play; it is certain that apprenticeship at 
home is more natural and more efficient than appren- 
ticeship abroad. The father will take more pains to 
teach, the boy will take more pains to learn, than will 
be the case when master and pupil are strangers to 
each other. 

The founders of Egyptian civilisation were acquainted 
with these facts. Hence they established customs which 
their successors petrified into unchanging laws. They 


> 


EMPIRE OF ETHIOPIA 33 


did it no doubt with best of motives. They adored 
the grand and noble wisdom of their fathers; whatever 
came from them must be cherished and_ preserved. 
They must not presume to depart from the guidance 
of those god-like men. They must paint as they 
painted, physic as they physicked, pray as they prayed. 
The separation of classes which they had made must 
be rendered rigid and eternal. 

And so the arts and sciences were ordered to stand 
still, and society was divided and subdivided into func- 
tions and professions, trades and crafts. Every man 
was doomed to follow the occupation of his father; to 
marry within his own class; to die as he was born. 
Hope was torn out of human life. Egypt was no longer 
a nation, but an assemblage of torpid castes isolated 
from one another, breeding in and in. It was no longer 
a body animated by the same heart, fed by the same 
blood, but an automaton neatly pieced together, of 
which the head was the priesthood, the arms the army, 
and the feet the working-class. In quiescence it was 
a perfect image of the living form, but a touch came 
from without and the arms broke asunder at the joints 
and fell upon the ground. 

The colony founded in Soudan by the exiled Pharaohs 
became, after the Restoration, an important province. 
When the new empire began to decline, a governor- 
general rebelled and the kingdom of Ethiopia was estab- 
lished. It was a medley dominion composed of brown 
men and black men, shepherds and savages, half-caste 
Egyptians, Arabs, Berbers, and negroes, ruled over by 
a king and a college of priests. It was enriched by 
annual slave hunts into the Black Country, and by the 
caravan trade in ivory, gold dust, and gum. It also re- 
ceived East India goods and Arabian produce through 
its ports on the Red Sea. Meroe, its capital, attained 
the reputation of a great city; it possessed its temples 
and its pyramids like those of Egypt, only on a smaller 


34 EGYPT CONQUERED 


scale. The Ethiopian empire, in its best days, might 
have comprised the modern Egyptian provinces of 
Kordofan and Sennaar, with the mountain kingdom of 
Abyssinia as it existed under Theodore. Of all the 
classical countries it was the most romantic and the 
most remote. It was situated, according to the Greeks, 
on the extreme limits of the world; its inhabitants were 
the most just of men, and Jupiter dined with them 
twice-a-year. They bathed in the waters of a violet- 
scented spring, which endowed them with long life, 
noble bodies, and glossy skins. ‘They chained their 
prisoners with golden fetters; they had bows which none 
but themselves could bend. It is at least certain that 
Ethiopia took its place among the powers of the ancient 
world. It is mentioned in the Jewish records and in 
the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions. 

So far had Egypt fallen that now it was conquered 
by its ancient province. Sabaco of Ethiopia seized the 
throne and sat upon it many years. But he was fright- 
ened by a dream: he believed that a misfortune im- 
pended over him in Egypt. He abdicated in haste, and 
fled back to his native land. 

His departure was followed by uproar and confusion, 
a complete disruption of Egyptian society, usurpation, 
and civil war. 

But why should this have been? Sabaco was an 
Egyptian by descent, though his blood had been dark- 
ened on the female side. He had governed in the Egyp- 
tian manner. He had abolished capital punishment, 
but in no other way had altered the ancient laws. He 
had improved the public works. He had taken the 
country rather as a native usurper than as a foreign 
foe. His reign was merely a change of dynasty, and 
Egyptian history is numbered by dynasties as English 
history is numbered by kings. 

But indirectly the Ethiopian conquest had prepared 
a revolution. Between the two services, the Army and 


CEDANT ARMA TOG 35 


the Church, there had existed a constant and perhaps 
wholesome rivalry since the days of Menes, the first 
king. It was a victory of the warrior class which estab- 
lished the regal power. It was a victory of the priests 
which assigned to themselves the right hand, to the of- 
ficers the left hand, of the Sovereign when seated on his 
throne. It was an evident compromise between the two 
that the king should be elected from the army, and that 
he should be ordained as soon as he was crowned. 
During the brilliant campaigns of the Restoration the 
military had been in power, but a long period of in- 
action had intervened since then. The discipline of the 
soldiers was relaxed; their dignity was lowered; they 
no longer tilled their own land; that was done by foreign 
slaves. Their rivals possessed the affection and rev- 
erence of the common people, while these soldiers, who 
had never seen a battle, were detested as idle drones, 
who lived upon what they had not earned. Under the 
new dynasty their position became insecure. In 
Ethiopia there was no military caste. The army of 
Sabaco had been levied from the pastoral tribes on the 
outskirts of the desert, from the Abyssinian moun- 
taineers and the negroes of the river plain. The king 
of Ethiopia was a priest, elected by his peers. He there- 
fore regarded the soldier aristocracy with no friendly 
eye. He did not formally invade their prescriptive 
rights, but he must have disarmed them, or in some way 
have taken out their sting. For as soon as he was gone 
the priests were able to form an alliance with the people, 
and to place one of their own caste upon the throne. 
This king deprived the soldiers of their lands, and the 
triumph of the hierarchy was complete. 

But in such a country as Egypt Disestablishment is 
a dangerous thing. During long centuries the people 
had been taught to associate innovation with impiety. 
That venerable structure, the Egyptian constitution, 
had been raised by no human hands. As the gods had 


36 CHURCH AND STATE 


appointed certain animals to swim in the water, and 
others to fly in the air, and others to move upon the 
earth, so they had decreed that one man should be a 
priest, and that another should be a soldier, and that 
another should till the ground. There are times when 
every man feels discontented with his lot. But it is 
evident that if men were able to change their occupa- 
tion whenever they chose, there would be a continual 
passing to and fro. Nobody would have patience to 
learn a trade; nobody would settle down in life. In 
a short time the land would become a desert, and 
society would be dissolved. To provide against this 
the gods had ordained that each man should do his 
duty in that state of life into which he had been called; 
and woe be to him that disobeys the gods! Their 
laws are eternal, and can never change. Their ven- 
geance is speedy, and can never fail. 

Such, no doubt, was the teaching of the Egyptian 
Church, and now the Church had shown it to be false. 
The revolution had been begun, and, as usually hap- 
pens, it could not be made to stop half way. As soon 
as the first precedent was unloosed, down came the 
whole fabric with a crash. The priest king, Sethos, 
reigned in peace; but as soon as he died the central 
government succumbed; the old local interests which 
had been lying dormant for ages raised their heads; 
the Empire broke up into twelve States, each governed 
by a petty king. 

We now approach the event which first brought 
Egypt into contact with the European world. Psam- 
miticus, one of the twelve princes, received as his 
allotment, the swampy district which adjoined the sea. 
coast and the mouths of the Nile. His fortune, as we 
shall see, was made by this position. 

The commerce of Egypt had hitherto been conducted 
entirely by means of caravans. From Arabia Felix 
came a long train of camels, laden with the gums of 


EGYPTIAN COMMERCE 37 


that aromatic land, and with the more precious produce 
of countries far beyond, with the pearls of the Persian 
Gulf and the carpets of Babylon, the pepper and ginger 
of Malabar, the shawls of Cashmere, the cinnamon of 
Ceylon, the fine muslins of Bengal, the calicoes of Coro- 
mandel, the nutmegs and camphor and cloves of the 
Indian Archipelago; and even silk and musk from the 
distant Chinese shores. From Syria came other cara- 
vans with the balm of Gilead, so precious in medicine, 
asphalt from the Dead Sea for embalming, cedar from 
Lebanon, and enormous quantities of wine and olive oil 
in earthen jars. Meroe contributed the spices of the 
Somauli country, ebony, ivory, ostrich feathers, slaves, 
and gold in twisted rings; the four latter products were 
also imported direct from Darfour, and by another route 
which connected Egypt through Fezzan with Carthage, 
Morocco, and the regions beyond the desert in the neigh- 
bourhood of Timbuctoo. In return, the beautiful glass 
wares of the Egyptians and other artistic manufactures 
were exported to Hindostan; the linen goods of Memphis 
were carried into the very heart of Africa as Manchester 
goods are now; and then, as now, a girdle of beads was 
the essential part of an African young lady’s dress. 

On the side of the Mediterranean, Egypt was a closed 
land; and this Chinese policy had not been adopted 
from superstitious motives. The first ships which sailed 
that sea were pirates who had kidnapped and plundered 
the dwellers on the coast. The government had there- 
fore in self-defence placed a garrison at Rhacotis har- 
bour, with orders to kill or enslave any stranger who 
should land. When the Phoenicians from pirates had 
become merchants they were allowed to trade with 
Egypt by way of land, and with this they were content. 
It was left for another people to open up the trade 
by sea. 

Tonia was the fairest province of Asiatic Greece. It 
lay opposite to Athens, its mother land. The same soft 


38 THE FAIR IONIA 


blue waters, the same fragrant breezes caressed their 
shores by turn. It was celebrated by the poets as one 
of the gardens of the world. There the black soil granted 
a rich harvest, and the fruit hung heavily on the 
branches. It was the birthplace of poetry, of history, 
of philosophy and of art. It was there that the Homeric 
poems were composed. It was there that men first 
cast off the chains of authority and sought in Nature 
the materials of a creed. 

It was, however, as a seafaring and commercial people 
that the Ionians first obtained renown. They served on 
board Phcenician vessels, and laboured in the dockyards 
of Tyre and Sidon until they learnt how to build the 
‘“sea-horses” for themselves, and how to navigate by 
that small but constant star which the Tyrians had 
discovered in the constellation of the Little Bear. They 
took to the sea on their own account, and in Egypt they 
found a good market. The wine and oil of Palestine, 
which the Pheenicians imported, were expensive lux- 
uries; the lower classes drank only the fermented sap 
of the palm tree and barley beer; and had only castor 
oil with which they rubbed their bodies, but with which, 
for obvious reasons, they could not cook their food. 
The Ionians were able to sell red wine and sweet oil at 
a much lower price; for in the first place they had 
vineyards and olive groves of their own; and secondly, 
such bulky wares could be brought by sea more cheaply 
than by land. 

The Greeks first appeared on the Egyptian coast as 
pirates clad in bronze; next as smugglers, welcomed by 
the people, but in opposition to the laws, and lastly as 
allies and honoured friends. ‘They took advantage of 
the confusion which followed the departure of Sabaco 
to push up the Nile with thirty vessels, each of fifty 
oars, and established factories upon its banks. They 
negotiated with Psammiticus, who ascertained that their 
country produced not only oil, but men. He ordered a 


THE PHIL-HELLENES 39 


cargo: and transports arrived with troops. Europeans 
for the first time entered the valley of the Nile. Their 
gallantry and discipline were irresistible, and the em- 
pire of the Pharaohs was restored. 

But now commenced a new regime. There succeeded 
to the throne a series of kings who were not related 
to the ancient Pharaohs; who were not always men of 
noble birth; who were not even good Egyptians. They 
were called Phil-Hellenes, or lovers of the Greeks. Of 
these Psammiticus was the founder and the first. He 
moved Egypt towards the sea. He placed his capital 
near the mouth of the river, that the Greek ships might 
anchor beneath its walls. This new city Sais being dis- 
tant from the quarries, was built of bricks from the 
black mud of the Nile; but it was adorned with spoils 
from the forsaken Memphis. Chapels, obelisks, and 
sphinxes were brought down on rafts. There was also 
a kind of Renaissance under the new kings; for a short 
time the arts again became alive. Psammiticus retained 
the soldiers who had fought his battles; and sent chil- 
dren to the camp to be taught Greek. Hence rose a 
class who acted as brokers, interpreters, and ciceroni to 
the travellers who soon crowded into Egypt. The king 
encouraged such visits, and gave safe-conducts to those 
who desired to pass into the interior. 

All this was a cause of deep offence to the people 
- of the land. They regarded their country as a temple, 
and all strangers as impure. And now they saw men 
whose swords had been reddened with Egyptian blood, 
swaggering as conquerors through the streets, pointing 
with derision at the sacred animals, eating things 
strangled and unclean. The warriors were those who 
suffered most. As a caste, they still survived, but all 
their power and prestige was gone. In battle, the for- 
eigners were assigned the post of honour—the right 
wing. In times of peace, the foreigners were the fa- 
vourite regiments, the household troops, the Guards. 


40 CANTON IN EGYPT 


While the Royals lived merrily at Sais crowned with 
garlands of the papyrus, and revelling at banquets to 
the music of the flute, the native troops were stationed 
on the hot and dismal frontiers of the desert; year fol- 
lowed year, and they were not relieved. Such a state 
of things was no longer to be borne. One king had 
robbed them of their lands, and now another had robbed. 
them of their honour. They were no longer soldiers, 
they were slaves; they determined to leave the country 
in which they were despised, and to seek a better for- 
tune in Soudan. In number, two hundred thousand, 
they gathered themselves together and began their 
march. 

They were soon overtaken by envoys from the king, 
who had no desire to lose an army. The soldiers were 
entreated to return, and not to desert their fatherland. 
They cried out, beating their shields and shaking their 
spears, that they would soon get another fatherland. 
Then the messengers began to speak of their wives and 
little ones at home. Would they leave them also, and 
go wifeless and childless to a savage land? But one of 
the soldiers explained, with a coarse gesture, that they 
had the means of producing families wherever they might 
go. This ended the conference. Psammiticus pursued 
them with his Ionians, but could not overtake them. In 
the wastes of Nubia there may yet be seen a colossal 
statue, on the right leg of which is an inscription in 
Greek, announcing that it was there they gave up the 
chase. The Egyptian soldiers arrived at Meroe in safety; 
the king presented them with a province which had 
rebelled. They drove out the men, married the women, 
and did much to civilize the native tribes. 

In the meantime Psammiticus and his successsors 
opened wider and wider the gloomy portals of the land. 
The town of Naucratis was set apart, like Canton, for 
the foreign trade. Nine independent Greek cities had 
their separate establishments within that town, and 


THE RENAISSANCE 41 


their magistrates and consuls, who administered their 
respective laws. The merchants met in the Hellenion, 
which was half temple, half Exchange, to transact their 
business and offer sacrifices to the gods. Naucratis was 
in all respects a European town. There the garlic-chew- 
ing sailors, when they came on shore, could enjoy a 
holiday in the true Greek style. They could stroll in 
the market-place, where the money-changers sat before 
their tables, and the wine merchants ran about with 
sample flasks under their arms, and where garlands of 
flowers, strange-looking fish, and heaps of purple dates, 
were set out for sale. They could resort to the barbers’ 
shops and gather the gossip of the day; or to taverns, 
where quail fighting was always going on. Nor were 
the chief ornaments of sea-port society wanting to grace 
the scene. No Egyptian girl, as Herodotus discovered 
would kiss a Greek. But certain benevolent and enter- 
prising men had imported a number of Hetere, or 
lady-friends, the most famous of whom was Rhodopis, 
the rosy-faced, whom Sappho’s brother fell in love with, 
and whom the poetess lampooned. 

The foreign policy of Egypt was now completely 
changed. A long period of seclusion had followed the 
conquests of the new Empire. But the battle-pieces of 
the ancient time still glowed upon the temple walls. 
With their vivid colours and animated scenes they 
seemed to incite the modern Pharaohs to heroic deeds. 
The throne was surrounded by warlike and restless 
men. It was determined that Egypt should become a 
naval power. For this timber was indispensable, and 
the forests of Lebanon must be seized. War was car- 
ried to the continent. Syria was reduced. A garrison 
was planted on the banks of the Euphrates. A navy 
was erected in the Mediterranean Sea, and the Tyrians 
defeated in a great sea battle. The Suez Canal was 
opened for the first time, and an exploring expedition 
circumnavigated Africa. 


42 THE EUPHRATES 


Yet, for all that, and all that, the Egyptian people 
were not content. The victories won by mercenary 
troops excited little patriotic pride, and the least re- 
verse occasioned the most gloomy forebodings, the most 
serious discontent. 'The Egyptians indeed had good 
cause to be alarmed; the Phil-Hellenes were playing at 
a dangerous game. Times had changed since Sesostris 
overran Asia. A great power had arisen on the banks 
of the Tigris; a greater power still on the banks of the 
Euphrates. They had narrowly escaped Sennacherib 
when Nineveh was in its glory: and now Babylon had 
arisen, and Nebuchadnezzer had drawn the sword. For 
a long time Chaldea and Egypt fought over Syria, their 
battle-ground and their prey. At last came the decisive 
day of Carchemish. The Pheenicians, the Syrians, and 
the Jews obtained new masters; the Egyptians were 
driven out of Asia. 

Yet even then the kings were not cured of their 
taste for war. An expedition was sent against Cyrene, 
a Greek kingdom on the northern coast of Africa. It 
was unsuccessful; and the sullen disaffection which had 
so long smouldered burst forth into a flame. The king 
was killed, and Amasis, a man of the people, was placed 
upon the throne. 

This monarch did not go to war, and he contrived 
to favour the Greeks without offending the prejudices 
of his fellow-countrymen. He was, however, a true 
Phil-Hellene; he encircled himself with a body-guard 
of Greeks; he married a princess of Cyrene; he gave a 
handsome subscription to the fund for rebuilding the 
temple at Delphi; he extended the commerce of Egypt 
and improved its manufactures. The liberal policy in 
trade which he pursued had the most satisfactory re- 
sults. Never had Egypt been so rich as she was then. 
But she was defenceless; she had lost her arms. It is 
probable that under Amasis she was a vassal of Baby- 
lon, paying tribute every year; and now a time was 


ASIA 43 


coming when gold could no longer purchase repose, when 
the horrified people would see their temples stripped, 
their idols dashed to pieces, their sacred animals mur- 
dered, their priests scourged, the embalmed body of their 
king snatched from its last resting-place and flung upon 
the flames. 

A vast wilderness extends from the centre of Africa 
to the jungles of Bengal. It consists of rugged moun- 
tains and of sandy wastes; it is traversed by three river 
basins or valley plains. 

In its centre is the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates. 
On its east is the basin of the Indus; on its west is the 
basin of the Nile. Each of these river systems is en- 
closed by deserts. The whole region may be pictured 
to the mind as a broad yellow field with three green 
streaks running north and south. 

Egypt, Babylonia, and India Proper, or the Punjaub, 
are the primeval countries of the ancient world. In 
these three desert-bound, river-watered valleys we find, 
in the earliest dawn of history, civilisation growing wild. 
Each in a similar manner had been fostered and tor- 
tured by Nature into progress; in each existed a people 
skilled in the management of land, acquainted with 
manufactures, and possessing some knowledge of practi- 
cal science and art. 

The civilisation of India was the youngest of the 
three, yet Egypt and Chaldewa were commercially its vas- 
sals and dependents. India offered for sale articles not 
elsewhere to be found: the shining warts of the oyster; 
glass-like stones dug up out of the bowels of the earth, 
or gathered in the beds of dried-up brooks; linen which 
was plucked as a blossom from a tree, and manufactured 
into cloth as white as snow; transparent fabrics, webs 
of woven wind which, when laid on the dewy grass, 
melted from the eyes; above all, those glistening, glossy 
threads stolen from the body of the caterpillar, beauti- 


44 THE INDIA TRADE 


ful as the wings of the moth into which that caterpillar 
is afterwards transformed. 

Neither the Indians, the Chaldeans, nor the Egyp- 
tians were in the habit of travelling beyond the confines 
of their own valleys. They resembled islanders, and 
they had no ships. But the intermediate seas were 
navigated by the wandering shepherd tribes, who some- 
times pastured their flocks by the waters of the Indus, 
sometimes by the waters of the Nile. It was by their 
means that the trade between the river lands was 
carried on. They possessed the camels and other beasts 
of burden requisite for the transport of goods. Their 
numbers and their warlike habits, their intimate ac- 
quaintance with the watering-places and seasons of the 
desert, enabled them to carry the goods in safety through 
a dangerous land; while the regular profits they de- 
rived from the trade, and the oaths by which they were 
bound, induced them to act fairly to those by whom 
they were employed. At a later period the Chinese, 
who were once a great naval people, and who claim the 
discovery of the New World, doubled Cape Comorin 
in their huge junks, and sailed up the western coast of 
India into the Persian Gulf, and along the coast of 
Arabia to the mouth of the Red Sea. It was probably 
from them that the arts of shipbuilding and navigation 
were acquired by the Arabs of Yemen and the Indians 
of Guzerat, who then made it their business to supply 
Babylon and Egypt and Eastern Africa with India 
goods. At a later period still these India goods were 
carried by the Phcenicians to the coasts of Europe, and 
acorn-eating savages were awakened to industry and 
ambition. India, as a Land of Desire, has contributed 
much to the development of man. On the routes of 
the India caravan, as on the banks of navigable rivers, 
arose great and wealthy cities, which perished when the 
route was changed. Open the book of Universal His- 
tory at what period we may, it is always the India 


EPIDEMIC WARS 45 


trade which is the cause of internal industry and for- 
eign negotiation. 

The intercourse between the Indians, Chaldeans, and 
Egyptians was often interrupted by wars, which recurred 
like epidemics, and which, like epidemics, closely re- 
sembled one another. The roving tribes of the sandy 
deserts, the pastoral mountains or the elevated steppe- 
plateaux, pressed by some mysterious impulse—a 
famine—an enemy in their rear—or the ambition of a 
single man—swept down upon the plains of the Tigris 
and Euphrates, and thence spread their conquests right 
and left. Sometimes they merely encamped, and the 
natives recovered their independence. But more fre- 
quently they adopted the manners of the conquered 
people, and flung themselves into luxury with the same 
ardour which they had displayed in war. This luxury 
was not based on refinement, but on sensuality, and it 
soon made them indolent and weak. Sooner or later 
they suffered the fate which their fathers had inflicted, 
and a new race of invaders poured over the empire, 
to be supplanted in their turn when their time was come. 

Invasions of this nature were on the whole beneficial 
to the human race. The mingling of a young powerful 
people with the wise but somewhat weary nations of 
the plains produced an excellent effect. And since the 
conquerors adopted the luxury of the conquered, they 
were obliged to adopt the same measure for supplying 
the foreign goods—for luxury means always something 
from abroad. As soon as the first shock was over the 
trade routes were again opened, and perhaps extended, 
by the bran new energies of the barbarian kings. 

Babylonia or Chaldza, the alluvial country, which 
occupies the lower course of the Euphrates, was un- 
doubtedly the original abode of civilisation in Western 
Asia. But it was on the banks of the Tigris that the 
first great empire arose—the first at least of which we 
know. For who can tell how many cities, undreamt 


46 THER ASSYRIAN EMPIRE 


of by historians, lie buried beneath the Assyrian plains? 
and Nineveh itself may have been built from some 
dead metropolis, as Babylon bricks were used in the 
building of Baghdad. Recorded history is a thing of 
yesterday—the narrative of modern man. There is, 
however, a science of history; by this we are enabled 
to restore in faint outline the unwritten past, and by 
this we are assured that whatever the names and number 
of the forgotten empires may have been, they merely 
repeated one another. In describing the empire of 
Nineveh we describe them all. 

The Assyrian empire covered a great deal of ground. 
The kingdom of Troy was one of its fiefs. Its rule was 
sometimes extended to the islands of the Grecian sea. 
Babylon was its subject. It stretched far away into 
Asia. But the conquered provinces were loosely gov- 
erned, or rather, no attempt was made to govern them 
at all. Phoenicia was allowed to remain a federation 
of republics. Israel, Judah, and Damascus, were al- 
lowed to continue their angry bickerings and petty wars. 
The relations between the conquered rulers and their 
subjects were left untouched. Their laws, their manners, 
and their religion, were in no way changed. It was 
merely required that the vassal kings or senates should 
acknowledge the Emperor of Nineveh as their suzerain 
or lord; that they should send him a certain tribute 
every year; and that they should furnish a certain con- 
tingent of troops when he went to war. 

As long as a vigorous and dreaded king sat upon 
the throne this simple machinery worked well enough. 
Every year the tribute, with certain forms of homage, 
and with complimentary presents of curiosities and arti- 
sans were brought to the metropolis. But whenever 
an imperial calamity of any kind occurred—an unsuc- 
cessful foreign war, the death, or even a sickness of the 
reigning prince—the tributes were withheld. Then the 
Emperor set to work to subdue the provinces again. 


FALL OF NINEVEH 47 


But this time the conquered were treated, not as enemies 
only, but as traitors. The vassal king and his advisers 
were tortured to death; the cities were razed to the 
ground; and the rebels were transplanted by thousands 
to another land, an effectual method of destroying their 
patriotism or religion of the soil. The Syrian expedi- 
tions of Sennacherib were provoked by the contumacy 
of Judah and of Israel. The kingdom of Israel was 
blotted out, but a camp plague broke up the Assyrian 
army before Jerusalem, and not long afterwards the 
empire crumbled away. All the vassal nations became 
free, and for a short time Nineveh stood alone, naked 
but unattacked. Then there was war in every direction, 
and when it was over, the city was a heap of charred 
ruins, and three great kingdoms took its place. 

The first kingdom was that of the Medes who had 
set the example of rebellion, and by whom Nineveh had 
been destroyed. They inhabited the highland regions 
bordering on the Tigris. Ecbatana was their capital. 
They were renowned for their luxury, and especially 
for their robes of flowing silk. Their priests were called 
Magi, and formed a separate tribe or caste; they were 
dressed in white, lived only on vegetables, slept on beds 
of leaves, worshipped the sun, and the element of fire, 
as symbols of the deity, and followed the precepts of 
Zoroaster. The Empire of the Medes was bounded on 
the west by the Tigris. They inherited the Assyrian 
provinces in Central Asia, the boundaries of which 
are not precisely known. 

The civilisation of Nineveh had been derived from 
Babylon, a city famous for its rings and gems, which 
were beautifully engraved, its carpets in which the fig- 
ures of fabulous animals were interwoven, its magnify- 
ing glasses, its sun-dials, and its literature printed in 
cuneiform characters on clay tablets, which were then 
baked in the oven. Many hundreds have lately been 
deciphered, and are found to consist chiefly of military 


AS BABYLON THE GREAT 


dispatches, law papers, royal game books, observatory 
reports, agricultural treatises, and religious documents. 
In the partition of Assyria, Babylon obtained Mesopo- 
tamia or the Land-between-the-Rivers and Syria, in- 
cluding Phcenicia and Palestine. Nebuchadnezzer was 
the founder of the Empire; he routed the Egyptians, 
he destroyed Jerusalem, transplanted the Jews on ac- 
count of their rebellion, and reduced Tyre after a memor- 
able siege. He built a new Babylon, as Augustus built 
a new Rome, and the city became one of the wonders 
of the world. It was a vast fortified district, five or 
six times the area of London, interspersed with parks 
and gardens and fields, and enclosed by walls on which 
six chariots could be driven side by side. Its position in a 
flat country made it resemble in the distance a mountain 
with trees waving at the top. These were the hanging 
gardens, a grove of large trees planted on the square 
surface of a gigantic tower, and ingeniously watered from 
below. Nebuchadnezzar erected this extraordinary 
structure to please his wife, who came from the high- 
lands of Media, and who, weary of the interminable 
plains, coveted meadows on mountain tops, such as her 
native land contained. The Euphrates ran through the 
centre of the city, and was crossed by a stone bridge, 
which was a marvel for its time. But more wonderful 
still, there was a kind of Thames Tunnel passing under- 
neath the river, and connecting palaces on either side. 
The city was united to its provinces by roads and for- 
tified posts; rafts inflated with skins, and reed boats 
pitched over with bitumen, floated down the river with 
timber from the mountains of Armenia, and stones for 
purposes of building. A canal, large enough for ships 
to ascend, was dug from Babylon to the Persian Gulf; 
and on its banks were innumerable machines for rais- 
ing the water and spreading it upon the soil. 

The third kingdom was that of the Lydians, a people 
in manners and appearance resembling the Greeks. They 


RICH AS CRGSUS 49: 


did not consider themselves behind the rest of the 
world. They boasted that they had invented dice, coin, 
and the art of shopkeeping, and also that the famous 
Etruscan state was a colony of theirs. They inhabited 
Asia Minor, a sterile, rugged table land, but possessing 
a western coast enriched by nature, and covered with 
the prosperous cities of the Asiatic Greeks. Hitherto 
Ionia had never been subdued, but the cities were too 
jealous of one another to combine, and Creesus was able 
to conquer them one by one. This was the man whose 
wealth is still celebrated in a proverb; he obtained his 
gold from the washings of a sandy stream. Croesus ad- 
mired the Greeks; he was the first of the lion-hunters, 
and invited all the men of the day to visit him at 
Sardis, where he had the pleasure of hearing Aésop tell 
some of his own fables. He was anxious that his capital 
should form part of the grand tour which had already 
become the fashion of the Greek philosophers, and that 
they should be able to say when they returned home, 
that they had not only seen the pyramids of Egypt and 
the ruins of Troy, but also the treasure-house of Croesus. 
When he received a visit from one of these sages in 
cloak and beard he would show him his heaps of gold 
and silver, and ask him whether, in all his travels he 
had ever seen a happier man; to which question he did 
not always receive a very courteous reply. 

After long wars, peace was established between the 
Babylonians, the Lydians, and the Medes, on a lasting. 
and secure foundation. The royal families were united 
by marriage; alliances, defensive and offensive, were 
made and ratified on oath. Egypt was no longer able 
to invade; and there was a period of delicious calm in 
that stormy Asiatic world, broken only by the plaintive 
voices of the poor Jewish captives who sat by the 
waters of Babylon and sang of the Holy City that was 
no more. 

In the twinkling of an eye all this was changed. A 


50 THE EMPIRE 


band of hardy mountaineers rushed out of the recesses 
of Persia, and swept like a wind across the plains. 
They were dressed in leather from top to toe; they 
had never tasted fruit nor wine; they had never seen 
a market; they knew not how to buy or sell. They 
were taught only three things—to ride on horseback, 
to hurl the javelin, and to speak the truth. 

All Asia was covered with blood and flames. The 
allied kingdoms fell at once. India and Egypt were 
soon afterwards added to this empire, the greatest that 
the world had ever seen. The Persians used to boast 
that they ruled from the land of uninhabitable heat to 
the land of uninhabitable cold; that their dominion 
began in regions where the sun frizzled the hair and 
blackened the faces of the natives, and ended in a land 
where the air was filled with snow like feathers, and 
the earth was hard as stone. The Persian empire was 
in reality bounded by the deserts which divided Egypt 
from Ethopia on the south, and from Carthage on the 
west; by the desert which divided the Punjaub from 
Bengal; by the steppes which lay on the other side of 
the Jaxartes; by the Mediterranean, the Caspian, and 
the Black Sea. 

Darius, the third emperor, invented a system of pro- 
vincial government which, though imperfect when viewed 
by the wisdom of modern times, was far superior to 
any that had preceded it in Asia. He appointed satraps 
or pachas to administer the conquered provinces. Each 
of these viceroys received with his commission a map 
of his province engraved on brass. He was at once the 
civil governor and commander of the troops; but his 
power was checked and supervised by a secretary or 
clerk of the accounts; and the province was visited by 
Royal Commissioners once a year. The troops in each 
province were of two kinds; some garrisoned the cities; 
others, for the most part cavalry, lived, like the Roman 
legions, always in a camp: it was their office to keep 


THH KING’S HAREM 51 


down brigands, and to convoy the royal treasure from 
place to place. The troops were subsisted by the con- 
quered people: this formed part of the tribute, and was 
collected at the point of the sword. There was also a 
fixed tax in money and in kind, which was received by 
the clerk of the accounts, and despatched to the capital 
every year. 

The Great King still preserved in his habits some- 
thing of the nomad chief. He did not reside all the year 
in one spot. He wintered at Babylon; but in the sum- 
mer the heat was terrible in that region; the citizens 
retired to their cellars; and the king went to Susa, which 
was situated on the hills; or to Ecbatana, the ancient 
capital of the Medes; or to Persepolis, the true hearth 
and home of the Persian race. When he approached one 
of these cities the Magi came forth to meet him, dressed 
all in white and singing hymns. The road was strewn 
with myrtle boughs and roses, and silver altars with 
blazing frankincense were placed by the wayside. 

His palaces were built of precious woods; but the 
naked wood was never permitted to be seen: the walls 
were covered with golden plates, the roof with silver 
tiles. The courts were adorned with white, green, and 
blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen to pil- 
lars of marble by silver rings. The gardens were filled 
with rare and exotic plants; from the cold bosom of the 
snow-white stone fountains sprang upwards, sparkling 
in the air; birds of gorgeous plumage flashed from tree 
to tree, resembling flowers where they perched. And as 
the sun sank low in the heavens, and the shadows on the 
earth grew deep, the voice of the nightingale was heard 
in the thicket, and the low cooing of the dove. Sounds 
of laughter proceeded from the house; lattices were 
opened; ponderous doors swung back; and out poured 
a troop of houris which a Persian poet only would ven- 
ture to describe. For there might be seen the fair Cir- 
cassian, with cheeks like the apple in its rosy bloom; 


52 EMBARRAS DE RICHESSH 


and the Abyssinian damsel, with warm brown skin and 
voluptuous drowsy eyes; the Hindoo girl, with lithe and 
undulating form, and fingers which seemed created to 
caress; the Syrian, with aquiline and haughty look; the 
Greek, with features brightened by intellect and vi- 
vacity; and the home-born beauty prepared expressly 
for the harem, with a complexion as white as the milk 
on which she had been fed, and a face in form and ex- 
pression resembling the full moon. 

All these dear charmers belonged to the king, and 
no doubt he often wished half of them away. For if 
he felt a serious passion rising in his breast, etiquette 
compelled him to put it down. Inconstancy was en- 
joined on him by law. He was subjected to a rotation 
of kisses by the regulated science of the harem. Cere- 
mony interdicted affection and caprice. He suffered 
from unvarying variety, and the monotony of eternal 
change. The whole empire belonged to him, and all its 
inhabitants were his slaves. If he happened to be struck 
to the heart by a look cast from under a pair of black- 
edged eyelids; if he became enamoured of a high bos- 
omed virgin, with a form like the oriental willow, he 
had only to say the word; she was at once taken to 
the apartments of the women, and her parents received 
the congratulations of their friends. But then he was 
not allowed to see his beloved for a twelvemonth; six 
months she must be prepared with the oil of myrrh, six 
months with the sweet odours, before she was suffi- 
ciently purified and perfumed to receive the august em- 
braces of the king, and to soothe a passion which mean- 
while had ample time to cool. 

The Great King slept on a splendid couch, overspread 
by a vine of branching gold, with clusters of rubies 
representing grapes. He wore a dress of purple and 
white, with scarlet trousers, a girdle like that of a 
woman, and a high tiara encircled by a sky-blue tur- 
ban. He lived in a prison of rich metal and dazzling 


THE PERSIAN ARMY 53 


stone: around him stood the courtiers with their hands 
wrapped in their robes, and covering their mouths lest 
he should be polluted by their base born breath. Those 
who desired to speak to his majesty prostrated them- 
selves before him on the ground. If any one entered 
uncalled, a hundred sabres gleamed in the air: un- 
less the king stretched out his sceptre the intruder would 
be killed. 

An army sat down to dinner in the palace every 
day, and every day a herd of oxen was killed for them 
to eat. These were only the household troops. But 
when the great king went to war, the provinces sent in 
their contingents, and then might be seen, as in some 
great exhibition, a collection of warriors from the four 
quarters of the earth. Then might be seen the Immor- 
tals or Persian life-guards; their arms were of gold and 
silver, their standards were of silk: then might be seen 
the heavy armed Egyptian troops, with long wooden 
shields reaching to the ground; the Greeks from Ionia, 
with crested helmets and breast-plates of bronze; the 
fur-clad Tartars of the steppes, who “raised hair’ like 
the Red Indians, a people probably belonging to the 
same race; the Ethiopians of Africa, with fleecy locks, 
clad in the skins of lions, and armed with throw-sticks 
and with stakes, the points of which had been hardened 
in the fire, or tipped with horn or stone; the Berbers 
in their four-horse chariots; the camel cavalry of 
Arabia, each camel being mounted by two archers sit- 
ting back to back, and thus prepared for the enemy on 
either side; the wild horsemen of the Persian hills who 
caught the enemy with their lassoes; the black-skinned 
but straight-haired aborigines of India, with their bows 
of the bamboo, and their shields made of the skins of 
cranes; and, above all, the Hindoos, dressed in white 
muslin, and seated on the necks of elephants, which 
were clothed in Indian steel, and which looked like 
moving mountains, with snakes for hands. Towers were 


54. THE CAMP 


erected on their backs, in which sat bowmen, who shot 
down the foe with unerring aim, while the elephants 
were taught to charge, to trample down the opposing 
ranks in heaps, and to take up armed men in their 
trunks and hand them to their riders. Sometimes huge 
scythes were fastened to their trunks, and they mowed 
down regiments as they marched along. The army was 
also attended by packs of enormous blood hounds to 
hunt the fugitives when a victory had been gained, and 
by falcons, which were trained to fly at the eyes of 
the enemy to baffle them, or even blind them as they 
were fighting. 

When this enormous army began to march, it de- 
voured the whole land over which it passed. At night 
the camp fires reddened the sky as if a great city was 
in flames. In the morning, a little after daybreak, a 
trumpet sounded, and the image of the sun cased in 
crystal, and made of burnished gold, was raised on the 
top of the king’s pavilion, which was built of wood, 
covered with cashmere shawls, and supported on silver 
poles. As soon as the ball caught the first rays of the 
rising sun, the march began. First went the chariot 
with the altar and the sacred fire, drawn by eight milk- 
white horses, driven by charioteers, who walked by the 
side with golden wands. The chariot was followed by 
a horse of extraordinary magnitude, which was called 
the Charger of the Sun. The king followed with the 
ten thousand Immortals, and with his wives in covered 
carriages drawn by mules, or in cages upon camels. 
Then came the army without order or precision; and 
there rose a dust which resembled a white cloud, and 
which could be seen across the plain for miles. The 
enemy, when this cloud drew near, could distinguish 
within it the gleaming of brazen armour; and they could 
hear the sound of the lash, which was always part of 
the military music of the Persians. When a battle 
was fought, the king took his seat on a golden throne, 


THE MARCH 55 


surrounded by his secretaries, who took notes during 
the engagement, and recorded every word which fell 
from the royal lips. 

This army was frequently required by the Persians. 
They were a restless people, always lusting after war. 
Vast as their empire was, it was not large enough for 
them. The courtiers used to assure an enterprising 
monarch that he was greater than all the kings that 
were dead, and greater than those that were yet un- 
born; that it was his mission to extend the Persian 
territory as far as God’s heaven reached, in order that 
the sun might shine on no land beyond their borders. 
Hyperbole apart, it was the aim and desire of the kings 
to annex the plains of Southern Russia, and so to make 
the Black Sea a lake in the interior of Persia; and to 
conquer Greece, the only land in Europe which really 
merited their arms. In both these attempts they com- 
pletely failed. The Russian Tartars, who had no fixed 
abode, whose houses were on wheels, decoyed the Persian 
army far into the interior, eluded it in pursuit, harassed 
and almost destroyed it in retreat. The Greeks defeated 
them in pitched battles on Greek soil, and defeated their 
fleets in Greek waters. 

This contest, which lasted many years, to the Greeks 
was a matter of life and death; but it was merely an 
episode in Persian history. The defeats of Platea and 
Salamis caused the Great King much annoyance, and 
cost him a shred of land and sea. But it did not 
directly affect the prosperity of his empire. What was 
the loss of a few thousand slaves, and of a few hundred 
Phenician and Egyptian and Ionian ships to him? In- 
directly, indeed, it decided the fate of Persia by devel- 
oping the power of the Greeks; but ruined in any case, 
that empire must have been, like all others of its kind. 
The causes of its fall must be sought for within, and 
not without. In the natural course of events, it would 
have become the prey of some people like the Parthian 


56 GREECE 


Highlanders or the wandering Turks. The Greek wars 
had this result: the empire was conquered at an earlier 
period than would otherwise have been the case; and it 
was conquered by a European instead of an Asiatic 
power. 

There is no problem in history so interesting as the 
unparalleled development of Greece. How was it that 
so small a country could exert so remarkable an influ- 
ence on the course of events and on the intellectual 
progress of mankind? The Greeks, as the science of 
language clearly proves, belonged to the same race as 
the Persians themselves. Many centuries before history 
begins, a people migrated from the Highlands of Cen- 
tral Asia, and overspread Europe on the one side, on 
the other side Hindostan. Celts and Germans, Rus- 
sians and Poles, Romans and Greeks, Persians and Hin- 
doos, all sprang from the loins of a shepherd tribe in- 
habiting the table land of the sources of the Oxus 
and Jaxartes, and are quite distinct from the Assyrians, 
the Arabs, and Pheenicians, whose ancestors descended 
into the plains of Western Asia from the table land of 
‘the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates. It is also 
inferred from the evidence of language, that at some 
remote period the Egyptians belonged to the same stock 
as the mountaineers of Armenia, the Chinese to the 
same stock as the Highlanders of Central Asia; and that 
at a period still more remote, the Turania or Chinese 
‘Tartar, the Aryan or Indo-European, and the Semitic 
races and languages, were one. Upon this last point 
philologists are not agreed, though the balance of au- 
thority is in favour of the view expressed. But as 
regards the descent of the English and Hindoos from the 
same tribe of Asiatic mountaineers, that is now as much 
a fact of history as the common descent of the English 
and the Normans from the same race of pirates on 
the Baltic shores. The Celts migrated first into Europe: 
they were followed by the Greco-Italian people, and 


THE ARYANS 57 
then by the German-Sclavonians, the Persians and Hin- 
doos remaining longest in their primeval homes. The 
great difference between the various breeds of the Indo- 
European race is partly due to their intermixture with 
the natives of the countries which they colonised and 
conquered. In India the Aryans found a black race, 
which yet exist in the hills and jungles of that country, 
and who yet speak languages of their own which have 
nothing in common with the noble Sanscrit. Europe 
was inhabited by a people of Tartar origin, who still 
exist as the Basques of the Pyrenees, and as the 
Finns and Lapps of Scandinavia. It is probable that 
these people also were intruders of comparatively recent: 
date, and that a yet more primeval race existed on the 
gloomy banks of the Danube and the Rhine, in huts. 
built on stakes in the shallow waters of the Swiss lakes, 
and in the mountain caverns of France and Spain. The 
Aryans, who migrated into India, certainly intermarried 
with the blacks, and there can be no reasonable doubt 
that the Celts who first migrated into Europe took the 
wives as well as the lands of the natives. The ab- 
origines were therefore largely absorbed by the Celts, 
to the detriment of that race, before the arrival of the 
Germans, whose blood remained comparatively pure. 

We may freely use the doctrine of intermarriage to 
explain the difference in colour between the sepoy and 
his officer. We may apply it—though with less con- 
fidence—to explain the difference in character and aspect 
between the Irish and the English; but we do not think 
that the doctrine will help us much toward expounding 
the genius of Greece. And if the superiority of that 
people was not dependent in any way on race distine- 
tions, inherent or acquired, it must have been in some 
way connected with locality and other incidents of life. 

A glance at the map is sufficient to explain how it 
was that Greece become civilised before the other Euro- 
pean lands. It is nearest to those countries in which 


58 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GREECE 


civilisation first arose. It is the border land of the 
east and west. The western coast of Asia and the east- 
ern coast of Greece lie side by side; the sea between 
them is narrow, the islands like stepping stones across 
a brook. On the other hand, a mountain wall extends 
in the form of an are from the Adriatic to the Black 
Sea, and shuts off Europe from Greece, which is thus 
compelled to grow towards Asia as a tree grows towards 
the light. Its coasts are indented in a peculiar manner 
by the sea. Deep bays and snug coves, forming hos- 
pitable ports, abound. The character of the Avégean is 
mild and humane; its atmosphere is clear and favour- 
able for those who navigate by the eye from island to 
island, and from point to point. The purple shell fish, 
so much in request with the Phcenicians for their manu- 
factures, was found upon the coasts of Greece. A trade 
was opened up between the two lands, and with trade 
there came arithmetic and letters to assist the trade, 
and from these a desire on the part of the Greeks for 
more luxury and more knowledge. All this was natural 
enough. But how was it that whatever came into the 
hands of the Greeks was used merely as raw material, 
that whatever they touched was transmuted into gold? 
How was it that Asia was only their dame’s school, and 
that they discovered the higher branches of knowledge 
for themselves? How was it that they who were taught 
by the Babylonians to divide the day into twelve hours 
afterwards exalted astronomy to the rank of an exact 
science? How was it that they who received from Egypt 
the canon of proportions, and the first ideas of the 
portraiture of the human form, afterwards soared into 
the regions of the ideal, and created in marble a beauty 
more exquisite than can be found on earth, a vision, as 
it were, of some unknown, yet not unimagined world? 

The mountains of Greece are disposed in a peculiar 
manner, so as to enclose extensive tracts of land which 
assume the appearance of large basins or circular hol- 


THE CLIMATE 59 


lows, level as the ocean, and consisting of rich alluvial 
soil, through which rise steep insulated rocks. The 
plain subsisted a numerous population; the rock be- 
came the Acropolis or citadel of the chief town, and 
the mountains were barriers against invasion. Other 
districts were parcelled out by water in the same man- 
ner; their frontiers were swift streaming rivers, or estu- 
aries of the sea. Each of these cantons became an in- 
dependent city state, and the natives of each canton 
became warmly attached to their fatherland. Nature 
had given them ramparts which they knew how to use. 
They defended with obstinacy the river and the pass; 
if those were forced, the citadel became a place of 
refuge and resistance; and if the worst came to the 
worst, they could escape to inaccessible mountain caves. 

Each of these States possessed a constitution of its 
own, and each was home-made, and differed slightly 
from the rest. It may be imagined what a variety of 
ideas must have risen in the process of their manufac- 
ture. The laws were debated in a general assembly of 
the citizens; each community within itself was full of 
intellectual activity. 

Self-development and independence are too often ac- 
companied by isolation; and nations, like individuals, 
become torpid when they retire from the world. But 
this was not the case with Greece. Though its people 
were divided into separate States, they all spoke the 
same language and worshipped the same gods; and 
there existed certain institutions which at appointed 
times assembled them together as a nation. 

Greece is a country which possesses the most extraor- 
dinary climate in the world. Within two degrees of lati- 
tude it ranges from the beech to the palm. In the morn- 
ing the traveller may be shivering in a snow storm, and 
viewing a winter landscape of naked trees; in the after- 
noon he may be sweltering beneath a tropical sun, with 
oleanders blooming around him and oranges shining in 


60 THE GAMES 


the green foliage like balls of gold. From this variety 
of climate resulted a variety of produce which stimu- 
lated the natives to barter and exchange. A central 
spot was chosen as the market-place, and it was made, 
for the common protection, a sanctuary of Apollo. The 
people, when they met for the purposes of trade, per- 
formed at the same time religious rites, and also amused 
themselves, in the rude manner of the age, with boxing, 
wrestling, running races, and throwing the spear; or they 
listened to the minstrels, who sang the ballads of ancient 
times, and to the prophets or inspired politicians, who 
chanted predictions in hexameters. That sanctuary be- 
came in time the famous oracle of Delphi; and those 
sports expanded into the Olympian games. To the great 
fair came Greeks from all parts of the land; and when 
chariot races were introduced, it became necessary to 
make good roads from State to State, and to build 
bridges across the streams. The administration of the 
sanctuary, the laws and regulations of the games, and 
the management of the public fund subscribed for the 
expenses of the fair, could only be arranged by means 
of a national council, composed of deputies from all the 
States. This congress was called the Amphictyonic 
League, which, soon extending its powers, enacted na- 
tional laws, and as a Supreme Court of Arbitration, de- 
cided all questions that arose between State and State. 

At Olympia, the inhabitants of the coast displayed 
the scarlet cloth and the rich trinkets which they had 
obtained from Pheenician ships. At Olympia, those who 
had been kidnapped into slavery, and had afterwards 
been ransomed by their friends at home, related to an 
eager crowd the wonders which they had seen in the en- 
chanted regions of the East. 

And then throughout all Greece there was an inward 
stirring and a hankering after the unknown, and a desire 
to achieve great deeds. It began with the expedition 


THE EMIGRATION 61 


of Jason,—an exploring voyage to the Black Sea: it 
culminated in the siege of Troy. 

In such countries as the Grecian States, where the 
area is small, the community flourishing, and the frontier 
inexorably defined, the Law of Population operates 
with unusual force. The mountain walls of the Greek 
cantons, like the deserts which surrounded Egypt, not 
only kept out the enemy, but also kept in the natives: 
they were not only fortresses but prisons. In order to 
exist, the Greeks were obliged to cultivate every inch 
of soil. But when this had been done, the population 
still continued to increase; and now the land could no 
longer be increased. In those early days they had no 
manufactures, mines, or foreign commerce by means of 
which they could supply themselves, as we do, with food 
from other lands. In such an emergency, the Goy- 
ernment, if it acts at all, has only two methods to pur- 
sue. It must either strangle or bleed the population; 
it must organise infanticide or emigration. 

The first method was practised to some extent, but, 
happily, the last was now within their power. The Tro- 
jan war had made them acquainted with the Asiatic 
coast, and overcrowded states began to send forth col- 
onies by public act. The emigrants consisted chiefly, 
as may be supposed, of the poor, the dangerous, and the 
discontented classes. They took with them no women; 
they went forth, like the buccaneers, sword in hand. 
They swooped down on the Jonian coast; there was at 
that time no power in Asia Minor which was able to 
resist them. They obtained wives, sometimes by force, 
sometimes by peaceable arrangement with the natives. 
In course of time the coast of Asia Minor was lined 
with rich and flourishing towns. The mother country 
continued to pour forth colonies, and colonies also 
founded colonies. The Greeks sailed and settled in every 
direction. They braved the dark mists and the inclement 
seasons of the Black Sea, and took up their abode among 


62 THE COLONIES 


a people whose faces were almost concealed in furs, who 
dwelt at the mouths of great rivers, and cultivated 
boundless plains of wheat. This wheat the Greeks ex- 
ported to the mother country, with barrels of the salted 
tunny fish, and the gold of Ural, and even the rich 
products of the Oriental trade which were brought 
across Asia from India or China by the waters of the 
Oxus to the Aral Sea, from the Aral to the Caspian 
Sea by land, from the Caspian to the Black Sea by the 
Volga and the Don. 

But where Italy dipped her arched and lovely foot 
in the blue waters of an untroubled sea, beneath the 
blue roof of an unclouded sky; where the flowers never 
perished; where eternal summer smiled; where mere 
existence was voluptuous, and life itself a sensual joy: 
there the Greek cities clustered richly together; cities 
shining with marble, and built in fairy forms; before 
them the deep tranquil harbour; behind them violet 
valleys, myrtle groves, and green lakes of waving corn. 

When a band of emigrants went forth, they took with 
them fire, kindled on the city hearth. Although each 
colony was independent, it regarded with reverence the 
mother state, and all considered themselves with pride 
not foreigners, but Greeks; for Greece was not a coun- 
try, but a people: wherever the Greek language was 
spoken, that was Greece. They all spoke the same 
grand and harmonious language—although the dialects 
might differ; they had the same bible, for Homer was 
in all their hearts, and the memory of their youthful 
glory was associated in their minds with the union of 
Greek warriors beneath the walls of Troy. The chief 
colonial states were represented at the meetings of 
the Amphictyonic League, and any Greek from the 
Crimea to Marseilles might contend at the Olympian 
games with the full rights of a Spartan or Athenian, a 
privilege which the Great King could by no means 
have obtained. 





THE GYMNASIUM 63 


The intense enthusiasm which was excited by the 
Olympian games was the chief cause of the remarkable 
development of Greece. The man who won the olive 
garland on that celebrated course was famous for ever 
afterwards. His statue was erected in the public hall 
at Delphi; he was received by his native city with all 
the honours of a formal triumph; he was not allowed 
to enter by the gates; a part of the city wall was 
beaten down. The city itself became, during five years, 
the talk of Greece, and wherever its people travelled, 
they were welcomed with congratulations and esteem. 

The passion for praise is innate in the human mind. 
It is only natural that, throughout the whole Greek 
world, a spirit of eager rivalry and emulation should 
prevail. In every city was established a gymnasium 
where crowds of young men exercised themselves naked. 
This institution was originally intended for those only 
who were in training for the Olympian games, but after- 
wards it became a part of daily life, and the Greeks 
went to the gymnasium with the same regularity as the 
Romans went to the bath. 

At first the national prizes were only for athletes, 
but at a later period the principle of competition was 
extended to books and musical compositions, paintings, 
and statues. There was also a competition, in rich and 
elegant display. The carriages and retinues which were 
exhibited upon the course excited a desire to obtain 
wealth, and gave a useful impulse to foreign commerce, 
manufactures, and mining operations. 

The Greek world was composed of municipal aristoc- 
racies, societies of gentlemen living in towns, with their 
farms in the neighbourhood, and having all their work 
done for them by slaves. They themselves had nothing 
to do but to cultivate their bodies by exercise in the gym- 
nasium, and their minds by conversation in the market- 
place. They lived out of doors, while their wives re- 
mained shut up at home. In Greece, a lady could only 


64 THE MARKET PLACE 


enter society by adopting a mode of life which in Eng- 
land usually facilitates her exit. The Greeks spent little 
money on their wives, their houses, or their food: the 
rich men were expected to give dramatic entertainments, 
and to contribute a company or a man-of-war for the 
protection of the city. The market-place was the Greek 
club. There the merchants talked their business: the 
labours of the desk were then unknown. The philos- 
opher instructed his pupils under the shade of a plane 
tree, or strolling up and down a garden path. Mingling 
with the song of the cicada from the boughs, might be 
heard the chipping of the chisel from the workshop of 
the sculptor, and the laughter and shouts from the gym- 
nasium. And sometimes the tinkle of a harp could 
be heard; a crowd would be collected; and a rhapsodist 
would recite a scene from the Iliad, every word of which 
his audience knew by heart, as an audience at Naples 
or Milan know every bar of the opera which is about 
to be performed. Sometimes a citizen would announce 
that his guest, who had just arrived from the sea of 
Azov or the Pillars of Hercules, would read a paper 
on the manners and customs of the barbarians. It was 
in the city that the book was first read and the statue 
exhibited—the rehearsal and the private view; it was in 
Olympia that they were published to the nation. When 
the public murmured in delight around a picture of 
Xeuxis or a statue of Praxiteles, when they thundered 
in applause to an ode by Pindar or a lecture by Herod- 
otus, how many hundreds of young men must have 
gone home with burning brows and throbbing hearts, 
devoured by the love of Fame. And when we consider 
that though the geographical Greece is a small country, 
the true Greece—that is to say, the land inhabited by 
the Greeks—was in reality a large country,—when we 
consider with what an immense number of ideas they 
must have been brought in contact on the shores of the 
Black Sea, in Asia Minor, in Southern Italy, in Southern 





THE RELIGION 65 


France, in Egypt, and in Northern Africa,—when we 
consider that owing to those noble contests of Olympia, 
city was ever contending against city, and within the 
city man against man,—there is surely no longer any- 
thing mysterious in the exceptional development of that 
people. | 

Education in Greece was not a monopoly; it was 
the precious privilege of all the free. The business of 
religion was divided among three classes. The Priests 
were merely the sacrificers and guardians of the sanc- 
tuary: they were elected, like the mayors of our market 
towns, by their fellow-citizens, for a limited time only, 
and without their being withdrawn from the business of 
ordinary life. The Poets revealed the nature, and por- 
trayed the character, and related the biography of the 
gods. The Philosophers undertook the education of the 
young; and were also the teachers and preachers of 
morality. If a man wished to obtain the favour of 
the gods, or to take divine advice, he went to a priest: 
if he desired to turn his mind to another, though scarcely 
a better world, he took up his Homer or his Hesiod: 
and if he suffered from sickness or mental affliction, he 
sent for a philosopher. 

It will presently be shown that the philosophers in- 
vaded the territory of the poets, who were defended by 
the Government and by the mob, and that a religious 
persecution was the result. But the fine arts were free; 
and the custom which came into vogue of erecting 
statues to the gods, to the victors of the games, and to 
other illustrious men, favoured the progress of sculp- 
ture, which was also aided by the manners of the land. 
The gymnasium was a school of art. The eyes of the 
sculptor revelled on the naked form, not purchased, as 
in London, at eighteenpence an hour, but visible in 
marvellous perfection at all times and in every pose. 
Thus ever present to the eye of the artist, it was ever 
present to his brain, and flowed forth from his fingers in 


66 THE AGE OF MARBLE 


lovely forms. As art was fed by nature, so nature was 
fed by art. The Greek women placed statues of Apollo 
or Narcissus in their bedrooms, that they might bear 
children as beautiful as those on whom they gazed. 
Such children they prayed the gods to give them; for 
the Greeks loved beauty to distraction, and regarded 
ugliness as a sin. They had exhibitions of beauty, at 
which prizes were given by celebrated artists who were 
appointed to the judgment-seat. There were towns in 
which the most beautiful men were elected to the priest- 
hood. There were connoisseurs, who formed companies 
of soldiers composed exclusively of comely young men, 
and who could plead for the life of a beautiful youth 
amidst the wrath and confusion of the battle-field. 

The Persian wars gave a mighty impulse to the in- 
tellect of Greece. Indeed, before that period Greek art 
had been uncouth; it was then that the Age of Marble 
really commenced, and that Phidias moulded the ideas 
of Homer into noble forms. It was then that Athens, 
having commanded the Greeks in the War of Inde- 
pendence retained the supremacy, and became the 
centre of the nation. Athens had died for Greece: it 
had been burnt by the Persians to the ground, and from 
those glorious ashes arose the Athens of history—the 
City of the Violet Crown. To Athens were summoned 
the great artists: to Athens came every young man who 
had talent and ambition: to Athens every Greek who 
could afford it sent his boys to school. The Academy 
was planted with wide-spreading plane trees and olive 
groves, laid out in walks, with fountains, and surrounded 
by a wall. A theatre was built entirely of masts, which 
had been taken from the enemy. A splendid harbour 
was constructed—a harbour which was in itself a town. 
All that fancy could create, all that money could com- 
mand, was lavished upon the city and its environs— 
the very milestones on the roads were works of art. 

The Persians assisted the growth of Greece, not only 


THE UNIVERSITY OF EGYPT 67 


by those invasions which had favoured the union, 
aroused the ardour, multiplied the desires, and ennobled 
the ambition of the Greek people, but also by their 
own conquests. Their failure in Europe and their suc- 
cess in Asia were equally profitable to the Greeks. 
Trade and travel were much facilitated by their exten- 
sive rule. A Government postal service had been estab- 
lished: royal couriers might be seen every day galloping 
at full speed along the splendid roads which united the 
provinces of the Punjaub and Afghanistan and Bokhara 
on one side of the Euphrates, and of Asia Minor, Syria, 
and Egypt on the other side of that river with the im- 
perial palaces at Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, and Per- 
sepolis. Caravanserais were fitted up for the reception 
of travellers in lonely places where no other houses 
were to be found. Troops of mounted police patrolled 
the roads. In desert tracts thousands of earthen jars, 
filled with water and planted up to their necks in sand, 
supplied the want of wells. The old system of national 
isolation and closed ports was battered down. The 
Greeks were no longer forbidden to enter the Phcenician 
ports, or compelled to trade exclusively at one Egyptian 
town. Greek merchants were able to join in the cara- 
van trade of Central Asia, and to traffic on the shores 
of the Indian Ocean. Philosophers taking with them a 
venture of oil to pay expenses, could now visit the 
learned countries of the East with more profit than had 
previously been the case. Since that country was de- 
prived of its independence, the priests were inclined to 
encourage the cultivated curiosity of their new scholars. 

Egypt from the earliest times had been the Univer- 
sity of Greece. It had been visited, according to tra- 
dition, by Orpheus and Homer: there Solon had studied 
law-making: there the rules and principles of the Py- 
thagorean order had been obtained: there Thales had 
taken lessons in geometry: there Democritus had laughed 
and Xenophanes had sneered. And now every intellec- 


68 THE GREEKS IN ASIA 


tual Greek made the voyage to that country; it was 
regarded as a part of education, as a pilgrimage to 
the cradle-land of their mythology. To us Egypt is a 
land of surpassing interest; but to us it is merely a 
charnel-house, a museum, a valley of ruins and dry 
bones. The Greeks saw it alive. They saw with their 
own eyes the solemn and absurd rites of the temple— 
the cat solemnly enthroned, the tame crocodiles being 
fed. Ibis mummies being packed up in red jars, scribes 
carving the animal language upon the granite. They 
wandered in the mazes of the Labyrinth: they gazed on 
the mighty Sphinx couched on the yellow sands with a 
temple between its paws: they entered the great hall 
of Carnac, filled with columns like a forest, and paved 
with acres of solid stone. In that country Herodotus 
resided several years, and took notes on his wooden 
tablets of everything that he saw, ascertained the ex- 
istence of the Niger, made inquiries about the sources 
of the Nile, collated the traditions of the priests of 
Memphis with those of Thebes. To Egypt came the 
divine Plato, and drank long and deeply of its ancient 
lore. The house in which he lived at Heliopolis was 
afterwards shown to travellers; it was one of the sights 
of Egypt in Strabo’s day. There are some who ascribe 
the whole civilization of Greece, and the rapid growth 
of Greek literature, to the free trade which existed be- 
tween the two lands. Greece imported all its paper 
from Egypt, and without paper there would have been 
few books. The skins of animals were too rare, and 
their preparation too expensive, to permit the growth of 
a literature for the people 

Gradually the Greeks become dispersed over the 
whole Asiatic world, and such was the influence of their 
superiority that countries in which they had no political 
power adopted much of their culture and their man- 
ners. They surpassed the inhabitants of Asia as much 
in the arts of war as in those of peace. They served 


PERSIAN DECLINE 69 


as mercenaries in every land; wherever the kettle-drum 
was beaten they assembled in crowds. 

It soon became evident to keen observers that the 
Greeks were destined to inherit the Persian world. That 
vast empire was beginning to decay. The character 
of the ruling people had completely changed. It is said 
that the Lombards of the fourth generation were terri- 
fied when they looked at the portraits of their savage 
ancestors who, with their hair shaved behind and hang- 
ing down over their mouths in front, had issued from 
the dark forests of Central Europe, and had streamed 
down from the Alps upon the green Italian plains. The 
Persians soon ceased to be rude and simple mountain- 
eers who had scratched their heads with wonder at the 
sight of a silk dress, and who had been unable to 
understand the object of changing one thing for another. 
It was remarked that no people adopted more readily 
the customs of other nations. Whenever they heard of 
a new luxury they made it their own. They soon be- 
came distinguished for that exquisite and refined polite- 
ness which they retain at the present day; their lan- 
guage cast off its guttural sounds and became melodious 
to the ear. Time went on, and their old virtues entirely 
departed. They made use of gloves and umbrellas when 
they walked out in the sun; they no longer hunted ex- 
cept in battues, slaughtering without danger or fatigue 
the lean mangy creatures of the parks. They painted 
their faces and pencilled their eyebrows and wore brace- 
lets and collars, and dined on a variety of entrées, tast- 
ing a little here and a little there, drank deep, yawned 
half the day in their harems, and had valets de chambre 
to help them out of bed. Their actions were like water, 
and their words were like the wind. Once a Persian’s 
right hand had been a pledge which was never broken; 
now on one could rely on their most solemn oaths. 

A country in which polygamy prevails can never en- 
joy a well ordered constitution. There is always an 


70 SERAGLIO INTRIGUE 


uncertainty about succession. The kingdom does not 
descend by rule to the eldest son, but to the son of the 
favourite wife; it is not determined beforehand by a 
national law, constant and unchangeable, given forth 
from the throne and ratified by the estates; it may be 
decided suddenly and at any moment in that hour when 
men are weak and yielding, women sovereign and 
strong; when right is often strangled by a fond em- 
brace, and reason kissed to sleep by rosy lips. The 
fatal Yes is uttered and cannot be revoked. The heir 
is appointed, and an injustice has been done. But the 
rival mother has yet a hope; the appointed heir may 
die. Then the seraglio becomes a nursery of treason; 
the harem administration is stirred by dark whispers; 
the cabinet of women and eunuchs is cajoled and bribed. 
A crime is committed, and is revenged. The whole pal- 
ace smells of blood. The king trembles on his throne. 
He himself is never safe; he is always encircled by 
soldiers; he never sleeps twice in the same place; his 
dinner is served in sealed trays; a man stands at his 
left hand who tastes from the cup before he dares to 
raise it to his lips. 

The satrap form of government is far superior to that 
of vassal kings. As long as the system of inspection 
is kept up there is no comparison between the two. But 
if once the satrapies are allowed to become hereditary 
there is no difference between the two. In the latter 
days of the Persian Empire the satraps were no longer 
supervised by Royal Visitors and Clerks of the Ac- 
counts. Each of these viceroys had his body-guard of 
Persians, and his army of mercenary Greeks. Some- 
times they fought against each other; sometimes they 
even contested for the throne. As for the subject na- 
tions they were by no means idle; revolts broke out in 
all directions. Egypt enjoyed a long interlude of in- 
dependence, though afterwards again reduced to servi- 
tude. The Indians appear to have shaken themselves 


RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND WL 


free, and to have attained the position of allies. Many 
provinces still recognised the Emperor as their suzerain 
and lord, but did not pay him any tribute. When he 
travelled from Susa to Persepolis he had to go through 
a rocky pass where he paid a toll. The King of Persia 
could not enter Persia Proper without buying the per- 
mission of a little shepherd tribe. 

A remarkable event now occurred. A Pretender to 
the throne hired a Greek army, led it to Babylon, and 
defeated the Great King at the gates of his palace. 
The empire was won, but the Pretender had fallen in 
battle; his Persian adherents went over to the other 
side; the Greeks were left without a commander, and 
without a cause. They were in the heart of Asia, cut 
off from their home by swift streaming rivers and burning 
plains of sand. They were only ten thousand strong, 
yet in spite of their desperate condition, they cut their 
way back to the sea. That glorious victory, that still 
more glorious retreat, exposed the true state of affairs to 
public view; and it became known all over Greece that 
the Persian empire could be had. 

But Greece unhappily was subject to vices and abuses 
of its own, and was not in a position to take advantage 
of the weakness of its neighbour. 

The intellectual achievements of the Greeks have been 
magnificently praised. And when we consider what the 
world was when they found it, and what it was when 
they left it, when we review their productions in connec- 
tion with the time and the circumstances under which 
they were composed, we are forced to acknowledge 
that it would be difficult to exaggerate their excellence. 
But the splendour of their just renown must not blind 
us to their moral defects, and to their exceeding narrow- 
ness as politicians. 

In the arts and letters they were one nation; and 
their jealousy of one another only served to stimulate 
their inventiveness and industry. But in politics this 


72 GREEK DISHONESTY 


envious spirit had a very different effect; it divided 
them, it weakened them; the Ionian cities were enslaved 
again and again because they could not combine. 
And one reason of their not being able to combine was 
this; they never trusted one another. It was their 
inveterate dishonesty, their want of faith, their dis- 
regard for the sanctity of oaths, their hankering after 
money, which had much to do with their disunion, even 
in the face of danger. There are some who desire to 
persuade us that the Greeks whom the Romans de- 
scribed were entirely a different race from the Greeks 
of the Persian wars. But an unprejudiced study of 
original authorities gives no support to such a theory. 
From the pirates to the orators, from the heroic and 
treacherous Ulysses to the patriotic and venal Demos- 
thenes, we find almost all their best men tainted with 
the same disease. Polybius complains that the Greek 
statesmen would never keep their hands out of the till. 
In the retreat of the Ten Thousand a little banter is 
exchanged between a Spartan and an Athenian which 
illustrates the state of public opinion in Greece. They 
have come to a country where it is necessary to rob the 
natives in order to provide themselves with food. The 
Athenian says, that as the Spartans are taught to steal, 
now is the time for them to show that they have prof- 
ited by their education. The Spartan replies, that the 
Athenians will no doubt be able to do their share as 
the Athenians appoint their best men to govern the 
State, and their best men are invariably thieves. The 
same kind of pleasantry, no doubt, goes on in Greece at 
the present day; to rob a foreigner in the mountains, or 
to filch the money from the public chest, are looked upon 
in that country as “little affairs’ which are not dis- 
graceful so long as they are not found out. But the 
modern Greeks are degenerate in every way. The 
ancient Greeks surpassed them, not only in sculpture 
and in metaphysics, but also in duplicity. With their 


TYRANNY OF ATHENS 713 


fine phrases and rhetorical expressions, they have even 
swindled history, and obtained a vast amount of ad- 
miration under false pretences. 

The narrowness of the Greeks was not less strongly 
marked. When Athens obtained the supremacy, a wise 
and just policy might have formed the Greeks into a 
nation. But Pericles had no sympathies beyond the city 
walls: he was a good Athenian, but a bad Greek. He 
removed the federal treasury from Delphi to Athens, 
where it was speedily emptied on the public works. 
Since Athens had now become the university and capital 
of Greece, it appears not unjust that it should have 
been beautified at the expense of Greece. But it must 
be remembered that the Athenians considered them- 
selves the only pure Greeks, and no Athenian was al- 
lowed to marry a Greek who was not also an Athenian. 
Heavy taxes were laid on the allies, and were not spent 
entirely on works of art. Besides the money that was 
purloined by government officials, large sums were dis- 
tributed among the citizens of Athens, as payment for 
attending the law courts, the parliament, and the theatre. 
It was also ordered that all cases of importance should 
be tried at Athens; and judicial decisions then as now 
were looked upon at Athens as saleable articles belong- 
ing to the Court. The Greeks soon discovered that the 
Athenians were harder masters than the Persians. They 
began to envy the fate of the Ionian cities, whose mu- 
nicipal rights were undisturbed. They rose up against 
their tyrant: long wars ensued; and finally the ships of 
Athens were burnt, and its walls beaten down to the 
music of flutes. Then Sparta became supreme, also 
tyrannised, and also fell; and then Thebes followed its 
example, till at last all the states of Greece were so 
exhausted, that the ambition of supremacy died away, 
and each city cared only for its own life. 

The jealousy and distrust which prevented the union 
of the Greeks, and the constant wars in which they were 


74 MACEDONIA 


engaged, sufficiently explain how it was that they did 
not conquer Persia; and by this time Persia had dis- 
covered how to conquer them. When Xerxes was on 
his famous march, he was told by a Greek, that if he 
ehose to bribe the orators of Greece, he could do with 
that country what he pleased, but that he would never 
conquer it by force. This method of making war was 
now adopted by the king. When Agesilaus the Spartan 
had already begun the conquest of the Persian empire, 
ten thousand golden coins marked with the effigy of a 
bowman were sent to the demagogues of Athens, Corinth, 
and Thebes. ‘Those cities at once made war upon 
Sparta, and Agesilaus was recalled, driven out of Asia, 
as he used to say, by ten thousand of the king’s archers. 
In this manner the Greek orators, who were often very 
eloquent men, but who never refused a bribe, kept their 
country continually at war, till at last it was in such an 
enfeebled state, that the Persian had no longer any- 
thing to fear, and even used his influence in making 
peace. The land which might have been the mistress 
of the East passed under the protectorate of an empire 
in its decay. 

It was now that a new power sprang into life. Mace- 
donia was a hilly country on the northern boundaries 
of Greece; and a Greek colony having settled there in 
ancient times, the reigning house and the language of 
the Court were Hellenic; the mass of the people were 
barbarians. It was an old head placed on young shoul- 
ders; the intellect of the Greek united with the strength 
and sinews of wild and courageous mountaineers. 

The celebrated Philip, when a young man, had passed 
some time in Greece: he had seen what could be done 
with money in that country; he conjectured what might 
be done if the money were sustained by arms. When 
he became king of Macedon, he made himself president 
of the Greek confederation, obtaining by force and skil- 
ful address, by bribery and intrigue, the position which 


ALEXANDER AND DARIUS 75 


Athens and Sparta had once possessed. He was prepar- 
ing to conquer Persia, and to avenge the ancient wrongs 
of Greece, when he was murdered; and Alexander, like 
Frederic the Great, inherited an army disciplined to 
perfection, and the great design for which that army 
had been prepared. 

Alexander reduced and garrisoned the rebellious 
Greece, passed over into Asia Minor, defeated a Persian 
army at the Granicus, marched along the Ionian coast 
and crossed over the snowy range of Taurus, which the 
Persians neglected to defend. He heard that the Great 
King was behind him with his army entangled in the 
mountains. He went back, won the battle of Issus, and 
took prisoner the mother and the wife and the daughter 
of Darius. He passed into Syria and laid siege to Tyre, 
the Cherbourg of the Persians, and took it after seven 
months: this gave him possession of the Mediterranean 
sea. He passed down the Syrian coast, crossed the 
desert,—a three days’ journey,—which separates Pal- 
estine from Egypt, received the submission of that 
satrapy, made arrangements for its administration, vis- 
ited the oracle of Jupiter Ammon in the Sahara, and 
returned to Tyre. Thence making a long detour to 
avoid the sandy deserts of Arabia, he entered the plains 
of Mesopotamia inhabited only by the ostrich and the 
wild ass, and marched towards the ruins of Nineveh, 
near which he fought his third and last great battle 
with the Persians. He proceeded to Babylon, which at 
once opened its vast gates. He restored the Chaldean 
priesthood, and the old idolatry of Belus. He took 
Susa, Ecbatana, and Persepolis, the other three palatial 
cities, reducing the highlanders who had so long levied 
blackmail on the Persian monarchs. He pursued Darius 
to the moist forest-covered shores of the Caspian sea, 
and inflicted a terrible death on the assassins of that 
ill-fated king. The Persian histories relate that Alex- 
ander discovered Darius apparently dead upon the 


76 ALEXANDER’S MILITARY POWER 


ground. He alighted from his horse; he raised his 
enemy’s head upon his knees; he shed tears and kissed 
the expiring monarch, who opened his eyes and said, 
“The world has a thousand doors through which its 
tenants continually enter and pass away.” “I swear to 
you,” cried Alexander, “I never wished a day like this; 
I desired not to see your royal head in the dust, nor 
that blood should stain these cheeks.”’ The legend is 
a fiction, but it illustrates the character of Alexander. 
Such legends are not related of Genghis Khan, nor of 
Tamerlane by the people whom they conquered. | 

He now marched by Mushed, Herat, and the reedy 
shores of Lake Zurrah to Candahar and Cabul. He en- 
tered that delightful land in which the magpies flutter- 
ing from tree to tree and the white daisies shining in 
the meadow grass reminded the soldiers of their home. 
Turning again towards the north he climbed over the 
lofty back of the Hindoo Koosh where the people are 
kept inside their houses half the year by snow, and 
descended into the province of Bactria, a land of low 
waving hills, destitute of trees, and covered only with 
a dry kind of grass. But as he passed on, crossing the 
muddy waters of the Oxus, he arrived at the oases of 
Bokhara and Samarcand, regions of garden-land with 
smiling orchards of fruit trees and poplars rustling their 
silvery leaves. Finally he reached the banks of the 
Jaxartes the frontier of the Persian Empire. Beyond 
that river was an ocean of salt and sandy plains in- 
habitated by wild Tartar or Turkish tribes who boasted 
that they neither reposed beneath the shade of a tree 
nor of a king, who lived by rapine like beasts of prey, 
and whose wives rode forth to attack a passing caravan 
if their husbands happened to be robbing elsewhere— 
a practice which gave rise to the romantic stories of the 
Amazons. These people came down to the banks of the 
river near Khojend and challenged Alexander to come 
across and have a fight. He inflated the soldiers’ tents, 


ALEXANDER AT BABYLON 77 


which were made of skins, formed them into rafts, 
paddled across and gave the Tartars as much as they 
desired. He returned to Afghanistan and marched 
through the western passes into the open plains of the 
Punjaub where, perhaps, at some future day, hordes of 
drilled Mongols and Hindoo sepoys will fight under 
Russian and English officers for the empire of the Asiatic 
world. He built a fleet on the Indus, sailed down it to 
its mouth, despatched his general Nearchus to the Per- 
sian Gulf by sea, while he himself marched back through 
the terrific deserts which separate Persia from the Indus. 

So ended Alexander’s journey of conquest, which was 
marked, not only by heaps of bones on batile-fields and 
by the blackened ashes of ruined towns, but also by 
cities and colonies which he planted as he passed. The 
memory of that extraordinary man has never perished 
in the East; the Turcomans still speak of his deeds of 
war as if they had been performed a few years ago: 
in the tea booths of Bokhara, it is yet the custom to 
read aloud the biography in verse of Secunder Room, by 
some believed to be a prophet, by others one of the be- 
lieving genii. There are still existing chiefs in the val- 
leys of the Oxus and the Indus who claim to be heirs of 
his royal person, and tribes who boast that their an- 
cestors were soldiers of his army, and who refuse to 
give their children in marriage to those who are not of 
the same descent. 

He returned to Babylon and there found ambassadors 
from all parts of the world waiting to offer him the hom- 
age of their masters. His success was incredible; it had 
not met with a single check; the only men who had ever 
given him cause to be alarmed were his own country- 
men and soldiers; but these also he had mastered by his 
skill and strength of mind. 

The Macedonians had expected that he would adhere 
to the constitution and customs of their own country, 
which gave the king small power in time of peace, and 


78 ALEXANDER’S CHARACTER 


allowed full liberty and even license of speech on the 
part of the nobles around the throne. But Alexander 
now considered himself not king of Macedonia but Em- 
peror of Asia, and successor of Darius the King of Kings. 
They had supposed that he would give them the conti- 
nent to plunder as a carcase, that they would have 
nothing to do but to plunder and enjoy. They were 
disappointed and alarmed when they found that he was 
reappointing Persian gentlemen as satraps, everywhere 
treating the conquered people with indulgence, every- 
where levying native troops. They were disgusted and 
alarmed when they saw him put on the tiara of the 
Great King, and the woman’s girdle, and the white and 
purple robe, and burst into fierce wrath when he ordered 
that the ceremony of prostration should be performed 
in his presence, as it had been in that of the Persian 
king. 

In all this they saw only the presumption of a man 
intoxicated by success. But Alexander knew well that 
he could only govern an empire so immense by securing 
the allegiance of the Persian nobles; he knew that they 
would not respect him unless they were made to humble 
themselves before him after the manner of their country, 
and this they certainly would not do unless his own of- 
ficers did the same. He, therefore, attempted to obtain 
the prostration of the Macedonians, and alleged, as a 
pretext for so extraordinary a demand, the oracle of 
Ammon, that he was the son of Jove. 

It is possible, indeed, that he believed this himself; 
for his vanity amounted to madness. He could not en- 
dure a candid word, and was subject, under wine and 
contradiction, to fits of ungovernable rage. At Samar- 
cand he murdered Clitus, who had insulted him grossly, 
but who was his friend and associate, and who had 
saved his life. It was a drunken action; and his re- 
pentance was as violent as his wrath. For Alexander 
was a man of extremes: his magnanimity and his cruelty 


ALEXANDER’S POLICY 79 


were without bounds. If he forgave, it was right roy- 
ally; if he punished, he pounded to the dust, and scat- 
tered to the winds. Yet, with all his faults, it is certain 
that he had some conception of the art of governing a 
great empire. Mr Grote complains that “he had none 
of that sense of correlative right and obligation which 
characterised the free Greeks;” but Mr Grote describes 
Alexander too much from the Athenian point of view. 
In all municipalities, in all aristocratic bodies, in all 
corporate assemblies, in all robber communities, in all 
savage families or clans, the privileged members have 
a sense of correlative right and obligation. The real 
question is, how far, and to what extent, this feeling 
prevails outside the little circle of selfish reciprocity 
and mutual admiration. The Athenians did not include 
their slaves in their ideas of correlative right and obli- 
gation; nor their prisoners of war, when they passed a 
public decree to cut off all their thumbs, so that they 
might not be able to handle the pike, but might still 
be able to handle the oar; nor their allies, when they 
took their money and spent it all upon themselves. 
Alexander committed some criminal and despotic acts, 
but it was his noble idea to blot out the word “bar- 
barian” from the vocabulary of the Greeks, and to 
amalgamate them with the Persians. Mr Grote declares 
that Alexander intended to make Greece Persian, not 
Persia Greek. Alexander certainly intended to make 
Greece a satrapy, as it was afterwards made a Roman 
province. And where would have been the loss? The 
independence of the various Greek cities had one time 
assisted the progress of the nation. But that time was 
past. Of late they had made use of their freedom only 
to indulge in civil war. All that was worthy of being 
preserved in Greece was its language and its culture, 
and to that Alexander was not indifferent. He sent 
thirty thousand Persian boys to school, and so laid 
the foundations of the sovereignty of Greek ideas. He 


‘80 WHAT HE DID 


behaved towards the conquered people not as a robber, 
but as a sovereign. The wisdom of his policy is clearly 
proved by the praises of the oriental writers and by the 
blame of the Greeks, who looked upon barbarians as a 
people destined by nature to be slaves. But had Alex- 
ander governed Persia as they desired, the land would 
have been in a continual state of insurrection, and it 
would have been impossible for him, even had he lived, 
to have undertaken new designs. 

The story that he wept because there were no more 
worlds for him to conquer, would seem to imply that, 
after the conquest of the Persian empire, there was noth- 
ing left for him in the way of war but to go out savage- 
hunting in the forests of Europe, the steppes of Tar- 
tary, or the deserts of Central Africa. However, there 
still remained a number of powerful and attractive states 
—even if we place China entirely aside as a land which 
could not be touched by the stream of events, however 
widely they might overflow. 

Alexander no doubt often reflected to himself that 
after all he had only walked in the footsteps of other 
men. It was the genius of his father which had given 
him possession of Greece; it was the genius of the Per- 
sians which had planted the Asia that he had gathered. 
It is true that he had conquered the Persian Empire 
more thoroughly than the Persians had ever been able 
to conquer it themselves. He had not left) behind him 
-a single rock fortress or forest den uncarried, a single 
tribe untamed. Yet still he had not been able to pass 
the frontiers which they had fixed. He had once at- 
tempted to do so, and had failed. When he had reached 
the eastern river of the Punjaub or Land of the Five 
Streams, he stood on the brink of the empire with the 
Himalayas on his left, and before him a wide expanse 
of sand. Beyond that desert was a country which the 
Persians had never reached. There, a river as mighty 
as the Indus, took its course towards the sea through 


AND MIGHT HAVE DONE 81 


a land of surpassing beauty and enormous wealth. 
There ruled a king who rode on a white elephant and who 
wore a mail coat composed entirely of precious stone; 
whose wives slept on a thousand silk mattresses and a 
thousand golden beds. The imagination of Alexander 
was inflamed by these glowing tales. He yearned to 
discover a new world; to descend upon a distant and 
unknown people like a god; to enter the land of dia- 
monds and rubies, of gleaming and transparent robes— 
the India of the Indies, the romantic, the half fabulous 
Bengal. But the soldiers were weary of collecting plun- 
der which they could not carry, and refused to march. 
Alexander spent three days in his tent in an agony of 
anger and distress. He established garrisons on the 
banks of the Indus; there could be little doubt that 
some day or other he would resume his lost design. 

There was one country which had sent him no am- 
bassadors. It was Arabia Felix, situated at the mouth 
of the Red Sea, abounding in forests of those tearful 
trees which shed a yellow fragrant gum grateful to the 
gods, burnt in their honour on all the altars of the 
world. Arabia was also enriched by the monopoly of 
the trade between Egypt and the coast of Malabar. It 
was filled with rich cities. It had never paid tribute 
to the Persians. On the land side it was protected by 
deserts and by wandering hordes who drank from hidden 
wells. But it could easily be approached by sea. 

On the opposite side of the Arabian gulf lay Ethiopia, 
reputed to be the native land of gold, but chiefly at- 
tractive to a vain-glorious and emulative man, from the 
fact that a Persian emperor had attempted its conquest, 
and had failed. There was also Carthage, the great 
republic of the West; and there were rich silver mines 
in Spain. 

And can it be supposed that Alexander would remain 
content when he had not yet made the circuit of the 
Grecian world? Was there not Sicily, which Athens 


82 HIS PLANS 


had attempted to conquer, and in vain? Rome had not 
yet become great, but the Italian city states were already 
famed in war. Alexander’s uncle had invaded that 
country, and had been beaten back. He declared that 
Alexander had fallen on the chamber of the women, and 
he on the chamber of the men. This sarcasm followed 
the conqueror into Central Asia, and was flung in his 
teeth by Clitus on that night of drunkenness and blood, 
every incident of which must have been continually 
present to his mind. 

We might therefore fairly infer, even if we had no 
evidence to guide us, that Alexander did not consider 
his career accomplished. But in point of fact, we do 
know that he had given orders to fit out a thousand 
ships of war; that he intended one fleet to attack Arabia 
from the Indian Ocean, and another to attack Carthage 
from the Mediterranean Sea. He had already arranged 
a plan for connecting Egypt with his North African pos- 
sessions that were to be; and had he lived a few years 
longer, the features of the world might have been 
changed. The Italians were unconquerable if united; 
but there was at that time no supreme city to unite 
them as they were afterwards united against Pyrrhus. 
It is at least not impossible that Alexander might have 
conquered Italy; that the peninsula might have become 
a land of independent cultivated cities like the Venice, 
and Genoa, and Florence of the middle ages; that Greek 
might have been established as the reigning language, 
and Latin remained a rustic dialect, and finally died 
away. It is at all events certain that, in a few more 
years, Alexander would have made Carthage Greek; 
and that event alone would have profoundly influenced 
the career of Rome. 

However this was not to be. Alexander went out in 
a boat among the marshes in the neighbourhood of 
Babylon, and caught a fever, the first symptoms of 
which appeared after a banquet, which had been kept 


HIS ILLNESS 83 


up all the night and the whole of the following day. At 
that time the Arabian expedition was prepared, and 
Nearchus the admiral was under sailing orders. Day 
after day the king continued to send for his officers to 
give orders, and to converse about his future plans. But 
the fever gradually increased, and while yet in the pos- 
session of his sense, he was deprived of the power of 
speech. The physicians announced that there was no 
longer any hope. 

And then were forgotten all the crimes and follies of 
which he had been guilty—his assumption of the hon- 
ours of a god, the murder of his bosom friend. The 
Macedonian soldiers came in to him weeping to bid him 
the last farewell. He sat up and saluted them man by 
man as they marched past his bedside. When this last 
duty had been discharged, he threw back his weary 
frame. He expired on the evening of the next day. 

The night, the dark murky night, came on. None 
dared light a lamp; the fires were extinguished. By the 
glimmering of the stars and the faint beams of the 
horned moon, the young nobles of the household were 
seen wandering like maniacs through the town. On the 
roofs of their houses the Babylonians stood grave and 
silent with folded hands, and eyes turned towards 
heaven, as if awaiting a supernatural event. High aloft 
in the air the trees of the hanging gardens waved their 
moaning boughs, and the daughters of Babylon sang the 
dirge of the dead. In that sorrowful hour the con- 
querors could not be distinguished from the conquered; 
the Persians lamented their just and merciful master; 
the Macedonians their greatest, bravest king. In an 
apartment of the palace an aged woman was lying on 
the ground; her hair was torn and dishevelled; a golden 
crown had fallen from her head. “Ah! who will now 
protect my girls?” she said. Then, veiling her face, and 
turning from her granddaughters, who wept at her feet, 
she stubbornly refused both food and light. She who 


84 HIS DEATH 


had survived Darius, was unable to survive Alexander. 
In famine and darkness she sat; and on the fifth day 
she died. 

Alexander’s body lay cold and stiff. The Egyptian 
and Chaldezan embalmers were commanded to do their 
work. Yet long they gazed upon that awful corpse 
before they could. venture to touch it with their hands. 
Placed in a golden coffin, shrouded in a bed of fragrant 
herbs, it remained two years at Babylon, and was then 
carried to Egypt to be buried in the oasis of Ammon. 
But Ptolemy stopped it on the road, and interred it at 
Alexandria in a magnificent temple, which he built for 
the purpose, and surrounded with groves for the cele- 
bration of funereal rites and military games. Long 
afterwards, when the dominion of the Macedonians had 
passed away, there came Roman emperors, who gazed 
upon that tomb with reverence and awe. The golden 
coffin had been sold by a degenerate Ptolemy, and had 
been changed for one of glass, through which the body 
could be seen. Augustus placed upon it a nosegay and 
a crown. Septimius Severus had the coffin sealed up in 
a vault. Then came the savage Caracalla, who had mas- 
sacred half Alexandria because he did not like the town. 
He ordered the vault to be opened, and the coffin to be 
exposed, and all feared that some act of sacrilege would 
be committed. But those august remains could touch 
the better feelings which existed even in a monster’s 
heart. He took off his purple robe, his imperial orna- 
ments, all that he had of value on his person, and laid 
them reverently upon the tomb. 

The empire of Alexander was partitioned into three 
great kingdoms, that of Egypt and Cyrene: that of 
Macedonia, including Greece: and that of Asia, the 
capital of which was at first on the banks of the 
Euphrates, but was afterwards unwisely transferred to 
Antioch. In these three kingdoms, and in their numer- 
ous dependencies, Greek became the language of goy- 


ALEXANDRIA 85 


ernment and trade. It was spoken all over the world, 
on the shores of Malabar, in the harbours of Ceylon, 
among the Abyssinian mountains, in the distant Mozam- 
bique. The shepherds of the Tartar steppes loved to 
listen to recitations of Greek poetry; and Greek trage- 
dies were performed to Brahmin “houses,” by the waters 
of the Indus. The history of the Greeks of Inner 
Asia, however, soon comes to an end. Sandracottus the 
Rajah of Bengal conquered the Greek province of the 
Punjaub. The rise of the Parthian power cut off the 
Greek kingdom of Bokhara from the western world, 
and it was destroyed, according to the Chinese his- 
torians, by a powerful horde of Tartars, a hundred and 
thirty years after its foundation. 

We can now return to African soil, and we find 
that a city of incomparable splendour has arisen, 
founded by Alexander, and bearing his name. For as 
he was on his way to the oasis of Ammon, travelling 
along the sea coast he came to place a little west of 
the Nile’s mouth where an island elose to the shore, and 
the peculiar formation of the land, formed a natural 
harbour, while a little way inland was a large lagoon 
communicating with the Nile. A few houses were scat- 
tered about, and this, he was told, was the village of 
Rhacotis, where in the old days the Pharaohs stationed 
a garrison to prevent the Greek pirates from coming on 
shore. He saw that the spot was well adapted for a 
city, and with his usual impetuosity went to work at 
once to mark it out. When he returned from the oasis, 
the building of the city was begun, and in a few years 
it had become the residence of Ptolemy, and the capital 
of Egypt. It filled up the space between the sea and the 
lagoon. On the one side, its harbour was filled with 
ships which came from Italy and Greece, and the lands 
of the Atlantic with ember, tm, wine, and oil. On the 
other side were the cargo boats that came from the Nile 
with the precious stones, the spices, and the beautiful 


86 TWO FACES UNDER ONE HAT 


fabrics of the East. The island on which stood the 
famous lighthouse was connected with the mainland by 
means of a gigantic mole, furnished with drawbridges 
and forts. It is on this mole that the modern city 
stands: the site of the old Alexandria is sand. 

When Ptolemy the First, one of Alexander’s generals, 
mounted the throne, he applied himself with much cau- 
tion and dexterity to that difficult problem, the gov- 
ernment of Egypt. Had the Greeks been the first con- 
querors of the country it is doubtful whether the wisest 
policy would have kept its natives quiet and content. 
For they were like the Jews, a proud, ignorant, narrow- 
minded, religious race, who looked upon themselves as 
the chosen people of the gods, and upon all foreigners 
as unclean things. But they had been taught wisdom 
by misfortune: they had felt the bitterness of an Orien- 
tal yoke; the feet of the Persians had been placed upon 
their necks. On the other hand, the Greeks had lived 
for centuries among them, and had assisted them in 
all their revolts against the Persian king. During their 
interlude of independence the towns had been garri- 
soned partly by Egyptian, and partly by Greek sol- 
diers: the two nations had grown accustomed to each 
other. Persia had finally re-enslaved them, and Alex- 
ander had been welcomed as the saviour of their coun- 
try. The golden chain of the Pharaohs was broken. 
It was impossible to restore the line of ancient kings. 
The Egyptians, therefore, cheerfully submitted to the 
Ptolemies, who reciprocated this kindly feeling to the 
full. They patronised the Egyptian religion, they built 
many temples in the ancient style, they went to the 
city of Memphis to be crowned, they sacrificed to the 
Nile at the rising of the waters, they assumed the divine 
titles of the Pharaohs. The priests were content, and 
in Egypt the people were always guided by the priests. 
The Rosetta Stone, that remarkable monument which, 
with its inscription in Greek, in the Egyptian vernacu- 


THE CONQUEST OF NATURE 87 


lar, and in the sacred hieroglyphics, has afforded the 
means of deciphering the mysterious language of the 
Nile, was a memorial of gratitude from the Egyptian 
priests to a Greek king, to whom in return for favours 
conferred, they erected an image and a golden shrine. 

But while the Ptolemies were Pharaohs to the Egyp- 
tians, they were Greeks to the colonists of Alexandria; 
and they founded or favoured that school of thought 
upon which modern science is established. 

There is a great enterprise in which men have always 
been unconsciously engaged, but which they will pursue 
with method as a vocation and an art, which they will 
devoutly adopt as a religious faith as soon as they 
realise its glory. It is the conquest of the planet on 
which we dwell; the destruction or domestication of the 
savage forces by which we are tormented and enslaved. 
An episode of this war occurring in Ancient Egypt has 
been described; the war itself began with the rise of 
our ancestors into the human state, and when drawing 
fire from wood or stone, they made it serve them night 
and day the first great victory was won. But we can 
conquer Nature only by obeying her laws, and in order 
to obey those laws, we must first learn what they are. 

Storms and tides, thunder and lightning and eclipse, 
the movement of the heavenly bodies, the changing as- 
pects of the earth were among all ancient people regarded 
as divine phenomena. In the Greek world there was no 
despotic caste, but the people clung fondly to their 
faith, and the study of nature which began in Ionia 
was at first regarded with abhorrence and dismay. The 
popular religion was supported by the genius of Homer. 
The Iliad and the Odyssey were not only regarded as 
epic poems, but as sacred writ; even the geography had 
been inspired. However when the Greeks began to 
travel, the old legends could no longer be received. It 
was soon discovered that the places visited by Ulysses did 
not exist, that there was no River Ocean which ran round 


88 A GREEK VOLTAIRE 


the earth, and that the earth was not shaped like a round 
saucer with the oracle of Delphi in its centre. The 
Egyptians laughed in the faces of the Greeks, and called 
them children, when they talked of their gods of yes- 
terday, and so well did their pupils profit by their les- 
son, that they soon laughed at the Egyptians for be- 
lieving in the gods at all. Xenophanes declaimed against 
the Egyptian myth of an earth-walking, dying, resusci- 
tated god. He said that if Osiris was a man they 
should not worship him; and that if he was a god, they 
need not lament his sufferings. This remarkable man 
was the Voltaire of Greece; there had been free thinkers 
before his time, but they had reserved their opinions 
for their disciples. Xenophanes declared that the truth 
should be made known to all. He lived like Voltaire 
to a great age; he poured forth a multitude of con- 
troversial works; he made it his business to attack 
Homer, and reviled him bitterly for having endowed the 
gods of his poems with the passions and propensities 
of men; he denied the old theory of the golden age, and 
maintained that civilization was the work of time and 
of man’s own toil. His views were no doubt distasteful 
to the vulgar crowd by whom he was surrounded; and 
even to cultivated and imaginative minds which were 
sunk in sentimental idolatry, blinded by the splendour 
of the Homeric poems. He was, however, in no way 
interfered with; religious persecution was unknown in 
the Greek world except at Athens. In that city free 
thought was especially unpopular, because it was im- 
ported from abroad. It was the doctrine of those tal- 
ented Ionians who streamed into Athens after the Per- 
sian wars. When one of these philosophers announced, 
in his open-air sermon in the market-place, that the 
Sun, which the common people believed to be alive— 
the bountiful god Helios which shone both on mortals 
and immortals—was nothing but a mass of red hot iron; 
when he declared that those celestial spirits, the stars, 


THE ATHENIAN INQUISITION 89 


were only revolving stones; when he asserted that 
Jupiter, and Venus, and Apollo, Mars, Juno, and Mi- 
nerva, were mere creatures of the poet’s fancy, and that 
if they really existed, they ought to be despised; when. 
he said that over all there reigned, not Blind Fate, but. 
a supreme all-seeing Mind, great wrath was excited 
amongst the people. A prophet went about uttering 
oracles in a shrill voice, and procured the passing of a 
decree that all who denied the religion of the city, or 
who philosophised in matters appertaining to the gods 
should be indicted as State criminals. This law was soon 
put in force. Damon and Anaxagoras were banished; 
Aspasia was impeached for blasphemy, and the tears 
of Pericles alone saved her; Socrates was put to death; 
Plato was obliged to reserve pure reason for a chosen 
few, and to adulterate it with revelation for the gener- 
ality of his disciples; Aristotle fled from Athens for his 
life, and became the tutor of Alexander. 

Alexander had a passion for the Iliad. His edition 
had been ‘corrected by Aristotle; he kept it in a precious 
casket which he had taken from the Persian king, and 
it was afterwards known as the “edition of the casket.” 
When he invaded Asia, he landed on the plains of Troy, 
that he might see the ruins of that celebrated town, 
and that he might hang a garland upon the tomb of 
Achilles. But it was not poetry alone that he esteemed; 
he had imbibed his master’s universal tastes. When 
staying at Ephesus, he used to spend hours in the studio 
of Apelles, sitting down among the boys, who ground 
colours for the great painter. He delighted in every- 
thing that was new and rare. He invented exploration. 
He gave a large sum of money to Aristotle to assist him 
in composing the History of Animals, and employed a 
number of men to collect for him in Asia. He sent 
him a copy of the astronomical records of the Baby- 
lonians, although by that time they had quarrelled like 
Dionysius and Plato, Frederic and Voltaire. It is taken 


90 THE LIBRARY AT ALEXANDRIA 


for granted that Alexander was the one to blame, as if 
philosophers were immaculate, and private tutors never 
in the wrong. 

The Ptolemies were not unworthy followers of Alex- 
ander. They established the Museum, which was a 
kind of college with a hall, where the professors dined 
together, with corridors for promenading lectures, and 
a theatre for scholastic festivals and public disputa- 
tions. Attached to it also was the Botanical Garden, 
filled with medicinal and exotic plants; a menagerie of 
wild beasts and rare birds; and the famous Library, 
where 700,000 volumes were arranged on cedar shelves, 
and where hundreds of clerks were continually at work, 
copying from scroll to scroll, gluing the separate strips 
of papyrus together, smoothing with pumice-stone and 
blackening the edges, writing the titles on red labels, 
fastening ivory tops on the sticks round which the rolls 
were wrapped. 

All the eminent men of the day were invited to take 
up their abode at the Museum, and persons were de- 
spatched into all countries to collect books. It was 
dangerous to bring original manuscripts into Egypt; 
they were at once seized and copied; and only the copies 
were returned. The city of Athens lent the autograph 
editions of their dramatists to one of the Ptolemies and 
saw them no more. It was even said that philosophers 
were sometimes detained in the same manner. 

Soon after the wars of Alexander, the “barbarians” 
were seized with a desire to make known to their con- 
querors the history of their native lands. Berosus, a 
priest of Babylon, compiled a history of Chaldzxa; 
Menander, the Pheenician, a history of Tyre; and 
Manetho wrote in Greek, but from Egyptian sources, 
a history which Egyptology has confirmed. It was at 
the Museum also that the Old Testament was trans- 
lated under royal patronage into Greek, and at the 
same time the Zoroastrian Bible, or Avesta Zend. 


THE MUSEUM 91 


There was some good work done at the Museum. 
Among works of imagination, the pastorals of Theo- 
critus have alone obtained the approbation of posterity. 
But it was in Alexandria that the immortal works of 
the preceding ages were edited and arranged, and it 
was there that language was first studied for itself, that 
lexicons and grammars were first compiled. It was only 
in the Museum that anatomists could sometimes obtain 
the corpse of a criminal to dissect; elsewhere they were 
forced to content themselves with monkeys. There 
Eratosthenes, the Inspector of the Earth, elevated 
geography to a science, and Euclid produced that work, 
which, as Macaulay would say, “every schoolboy 
knows.” There the stars were carefully catalogued and 
mapped, and chemical experiments were made. Expe- 
ditions were sent to Abyssinia to ascertain the causes 
of the inundation of the Nile. The Greek intellect had 
hitherto despised the realities of life: it had been con- 
sidered by Plato unworthy of a mathematician to apply 
his knowledge to so vulgar a business as mechanics. 
But this was corrected at Alexandria by the practical 
tendencies of Egyptian science. The Suez Canal was re- 
opened, and Archimedes taught the Alexandrians to ap- 
ply his famous screw to the irrigation of their fields. 
These Egyptian pumps, as they were then called, were 
‘afterwards used by the Romans to pump out the water 
from their silver mines in Spain. 

No doubt most of the museum professors were pitiful 
“Greculi,” narrow-minded pedants, such as are always 
to be found where patronage exists: parasites of great 
libraries who spend their lives in learning the wrong 
things. No doubt, much of the astronomy was astro- 
logical, much of the medicine was magical, much of the 
geography was mythical, and much of the chemistry 
was alchemical, for they had already begun to attempt 
the transmutation of metals, and to search for the elixir 
vitz and the philosopher’s stone. No doubt physics 


92 A SCENE IN ALEXANDRIA 


were much too metaphysical in spite of the example 
which Aristotle had given of founding philosophy on ex- 
periment and fact; and the alliance between science 
and labour, which is the true secret of modern civiliza- 
tion, could be but faintly carried out in a land which 
‘was under the fatal ban of slavery. Yet with all this, 
it should be remembered that from Alexandria came the 
seience which the Arabs restored to Europe, with some 
additions, after the Crusades. It was in Alexandria 
that were composed those works which enabled Coper- 
nicus to lay the keystone of astronomy, and which em- 
boldened Columbus to sail across the western seas. 

The history of the nation under the Ptolemies re- 
sembles its history under the Phil-Hellenes. Egypt and 
Asia were again rivals, and again contested for the vine- 
yards of Palestine and the forests of Lebanon. Alex- 
ander had organized a brigade of elephants for his army 
of the Indus, and these animals were afterwards in- 
variably used by the Greeks in war. Pyrrhus took 
them toe Italy, and the Carthaginians adopted the idea 
from him. The elephants of the Asiatic Greeks were 
brought from Hindostan. The Ptolemies, like the Car- 
thaginians, had elephant forests at their own doors. 
Shooting boxes were built on the shores of the Red Sea: 
elephant hunting became a royal sport. The younger 
members of the herd were entrapped in large pits, or 
driven into enclosures cunningly contrived, were then 
tamed by starvation, shipped off to Egypt, and drilled 
into beasts of war. On the field of battle the African 
elephants, distinguished by their huge flapping ears and 
their convex brows, fought against the elephants of 
India, twisting their trunks together, and endeavour- 
ing to gore one another with their tusks. The Indian 
species is unanimously described as the larger animal 
and the better soldier of the two. 

The third Ptolemy made two brilliant campaigns. In 
one, he overran Greek Asia, and brought back the sacred 


DESPOTIC DECAY 93 


images and vessels which had been carried off by the 
Persians centuries before. In the other, he made an 
Abyssinian expedition resembling the achievement of 
Napier. He landed his troops in Annesley Bay, which 
he selected as his base of operations, and completely 
subdued the mountaineers of the plateau, carrying the 
Egyptian arms, as he boasted, where the Pharachs them- 
selves had never been. But the policy of the Ptolemies 
was, on the whole, a policy of peace. Their wars were 
chiefly waged for the purpose of obtaining timber for 
their fleet, and of keeping open their commercial routes. 
They encouraged manufactures and trade, and it was 
afterwards observed that Alexandria was the most in- 
dustrious city in the world. “Idle people were there un- 
known. Some were employed in the blowing of glass, 
others in weaving of linen, others in the manufacture of 
papyrus. Even the blind and the lame had occupations 
suited to their condition.” 

The glorious reigns of the three first Ptolemies ex- 
tended over nearly a century, and then Egypt began 
again to decline. Such must always be the case where 
a despotic government prevails, and where everything 
depends on the taste and temper of a single man. As 
long as a good king sits upon the throne all is well. A 
gallant service, an intellectual production, merit of every 
kind is recognised at once. Corrupt tax-gatherers and 
judges are swiftly punished. The enemies of the people 
are the enemies of the king. His palace is a court of 
justice always open to his children; he will not refuse 
a petition from the meanest hand. But sooner or later 
in the natural course of events the sceptre is handed to 
a weak and vicious prince, who empties the treasury of 
its accumulated wealth; who plunders the courtiers, 
allowing them to indemnify themselves on those that are 
beneath them; who dies, leaving behind him a legacy 
of wickedness, which his successors are forced to accept. 
Oppression has now become a custom, and custom is 


94 A FRIEND OF ROME 


the tyrant of kings. In Egypt the prosperity of the 
land depended entirely on the government. Unless the 
public works were kept in good order half the land 
was wasted, half the revenue was lost, half the inhabi- 
tants perished of starvation. But the dykes could not. 
be repaired, and the screw pumps could not be worked 
without expense; and so if the treasury was empty the 
inland revenue ceased to flow in. The king could still 
live in luxury on the receipts of the foreign trade; but 
the life of the people was devoured, and the ruin of 
the country was at hand. The Ptolemies became invari- 
ably tyrants and debauchees; perhaps the incestuous 
marriages practised in that family had something to do 
with the degeneration of the race. The Greeks of 
Alexandria became half Orientals, and were regarded by 
their brethren of Europe with aversion and contempt. 
One by one the possessions of Egypt abroad were lost. 
The conditicn of the land became deplorable. The 
empire which had excited the envy of the world became 
deficient in agriculture, and was fed by foreign corn. 
Alexandria glittered with wealth which it was no longer 
able to defend. The Greeks of Asia began to fix their 
eyes on the corrupt and prostrate land. Armies gath- 
ered on the horizon like black clouds; then was seen the 
flashing of arms; then was heard the rattling of distant 
drums. 

The reigning Ptolemy had but one resource. In that 
same year a great battle had been fought, a great 
empire had fallen on the African soil. For the first time 
in history the sun was seen rising in the west. Towards 
the west ambassadors from Egypt went forth with silks 
and spices and precious stones. They returned, bringing 
with them an ivory chair, a coarse garment of purple, and 
a quantity of copper coin. These humble presents were 
received in a delirium of joy. The Roman Senate ac- 
corded its protection, and Alexandria was saved. But 
‘its independence was forfeited; its individuality became 


PHENICIA 95 


extinct. Here endeth the history of Egypt; let us 
travel to another shore. 

There was a time when the waters of the Mediter- 
ranean were silent and bare; when nothing disturbed the 
solitude of that blue and tideless sea but the weed which 
floated on its surface and the gull which touched it 
with its wing. 

A tribe of the Canaanites, or people of the plain, 
driven hard by their foes, fled over the Lebanon and 
took possession of a narrow strip of land, shut off by 
itself between the mountains and the sea. 

The agricultural resources of the little country were 
soon outgrown, and the Phcenicians were forced to 
gather a harvest from the water. They invented the 
fishing-line and net; and when the fish could no longer 
be caught from the shore, they had to follow them out 
to sea or starve. They hollowed trunks of trees with 
axe and fire into canoes; they bound logs of wood to- 
gether to form a raft, with a bush stock in it for a sail. 
The Lebanon mountains supplied them with timber; in 
time they discovered how to make boats with keels, and 
to sheathe them with copper which they found also in 
their mountains. From those heights of Lebanon the 
island of Cyprus could plainly be seen, and the current 
assisted them across. They colonized the island; it sup- 
plied them with pitch, timber, copper, and hemp, every- 
thing that was required in the architecture of a ship. 
With smacks and cutters they followed the tunny fish 
in their migrations; they discovered villages on other 
coasts, pillaged them and carried off their inhabitants 
as slaves. Some of these, when they had learnt the lan- 
guage, offered to pay a ransom for their release; the 
arrangement was accomplished under oath, and pres- 
ents as tokens of good-will were afterwards exchanged. 
Each party was pleased to obtain something which his 
own country did not produce; and thus arose a system 
of barter and exchange. 


96 THE PURPLE TRADE 


The Pheenicians from fishermen became pirates, and 
from pirates, traders; from simple traders they became 
also manufacturers. Purple was always the fashionable 
colour in the East; and they discovered two kinds of 
shell-fish which yielded a handsome dye. One species 
was found on rocks, the other under water. These shells 
they collected by means of divers and pointer dogs. 
When the supply on their own coast was exhausted they 
obtained them from foreign coasts, and as the shell 
yielded but a small quantity of fluid, and therefore was 
inconvenient to transport, they preferred to extract the 
dyeing material on the spot where the shells were found. 
This led to the establishment of factories abroad, and 
permanent settlements were made. Obtaining wool from 
the Arabs and other shepherd tribes, they manufactured 
woven goods, and dyed them with such skill that they 
found a ready market in Babylonia and Egypt. In this 
manner they purchased from those countries the produce 
and manufactures of the East, and these they sold, at a 
great profit, to the inhabitants of Europe. 

When they sailed along the shores of that savage con- 
tinent and came to a place where they intended to trade, 
they lighted a fire to attract the natives, pitched tents 
on shore, and held a six days’ fair, exhibiting in their 
bazaar the toys and trinkets manufactured at Tyre ex- 
pressly for their naked customers, with purple robes and 
works of art in tinted ivory and gold, for those who 
like the Greeks were more advanced. At the end of 
the week they went away, sometimes kidnapping a few 
women and children to “fill up.’”’ But in the best trad- 
ing localities the factory system prevailed; and their 
establishments were planted in the Grecian Archipelago 
and in Greece itself, on the marshy shores of the Black 
Sea, in Italy, Sicily, the African coast and Spain. 

Then becoming bolder and more skilful, they would 
no longer be imprisoned within the lake-like waters of 
the land-locked sea. They sailed out through the Straits 


DISCOVERY OF THE ATLANTIC 97, 
of Gibraltar, and beheld the awful phenomenon of 
tides. They sailed, on the left hand to Morocco for 
ivory and gold dust, on the right. hand for amber and 
tin to the ice-creeks of the Baltic and the foaming 
waters of the British Isles. They also opened up an 
inland trade. They were the first to overcome the ex- 
clusiveness of Egypt, and were permitted to settle in 
Memphis itself. Their quarter was called the Syrian 
camp; it was built round a grove and chapel sacred to 
Astarte. Their caravan routes extended in every direc- 
tion towards the treasure countries of the East. Wan- 
dering Arabs were their sailors, and camels were their 
ships. They made voyages by sand, more dangerous 
than those by sea, to Babylon through Palmyra, or 
Tadmor, on the skirts of the desert; to Arabia Felix, 
and the market city of Petra; and to Gerrha, a city built 
entirely of salt on the rainless shores of the Persian 
Gulf. 

Pheenicia itself was a narrow undulating plain about 
a hundred miles in length, and at the most not more 
than a morning’s ride in breadth. It was walled in by 
the mountains on the north and east. To those who 
sailed along its coast, it appeared to be one great city 
interspersed with gardens and fields. On the lower 
slopes of the hills beyond gleamed the green vineyard 
patches and the villas of the merchants. The offing was 
whitened with sails; and in every harbour was a grove 
of masts. But it was Tyre which, of all the cities, was 
the queen. It covered an island which lay at anchor 
off the shore. The Greek poet Nonnus has prettily 
described the mingling around it of the sylvan and 
marine. “The sailor furrows the sea with his oar,” he 
says, ‘‘and the ploughman the soil; the lowing of oxen 
and the singing of birds answer the deep roar of the 
main; the wood nymph under the tall trees hears the 
voice of the sea-nymph calling to her from the waves; 
the breeze from the Lebanon, while it cools the rustic 


98 INVENTION OF THE A. B. C. 


at his mid-day labour, speeds the mariner who is out- 
ward bound.” 

These Canaanitish men are fairly entitled to our grati- 
tude and esteem, for they taught our intellectual ances- 
tors to read and write. Wherever a factory trade is 
carried on it is found convenient to employ natives as 
subordinate agents and clerks. And thus it was that 
the Greeks received the rudiments of education. That 
the alphabet was invented by the Phenicians is improb- 
able in the extreme; but it is certain that they intro- 
duced it into Europe. They were intent only on mak- 
ing money, it is true; they were not a literary or artistic 
people; they spread knowledge by accident like birds 
dropping seeds. But they were gallant, hardy, enter- 
prising men. Those were true heroes who first sailed 
through the sea-valley of Gibraltar into the vast ocean 
and breasted its enormous waves. Their unceasing ac- 
tivity kept the world alive. They offered to every coun- 
try something which it did not possess. They roused 
the savage Briton from his torpor with a rag of scarlet 
cloth, and stirred him to sweat in the dark bowels of the 
earth. They brought to the satiated Indian prince the 
luscious wines of Syria and the Grecian isles in goblets 
or exquisitely painted glass. From the amber gatherers 
of the Baltic mud to the nutmeg growers of the equa- 
torial groves, from the mulberry plantations of the Ce- 
lestial empire to the tin mines of Cornwall, and the silver 
mines of Spain, emulation was excited, new wants were 
created, whole nations were stimulated to industry by 
means of the Pheenicians. 

Shipbuilding and navigation were their inventions, 
and for a long time were entirely in their hands. 
Phenician shipwrights were employed to build the fleet 
of Sennacherib: Phcenician mariners were employed by 
Necho to sail around Africa. But they could not for 
ever monopolise the sea. The Greeks built ships on 
the Phenician model and soon showed their masters 


GREECE VERSUS TYRE 99 


that kidnapping and piracy was a game at which two 
could play. The merchant kings who possessed the 
whole commercial world were too wise to stake their 
prosperity on a single province. They had no wish to 
tempt a siege of Tyre which might resemble the siege 
of Troy. They quickly retired from Greece and its 
islands, and the western coast of Asia Minor and the 
margin of the Black Sea. They allowed the Greeks to 
take the foot of Italy, and the eastern half of Sicily, 
and did not molest their isolated colonies, Cyrene in 
Africa, and Marseilles in Southern Gaul. 

But in spite of all their prudence and precautions 
the Greeks supplanted them entirely. The Phcenicians 
like the Jews were vassals of necessity and by position: 
they lived half way between two empires. They found 
it cheaper to pay tribute than to go to war, and sub- 
mitted to the Emperor of Syria for the time being, send- 
ing their money with equal indifference to Nineveh or 
Memphis. 

But when the empire was disputed, as in the days 
of Nebuchadnezzar and of Necho, they were compelled 
to choose a side. Like the Jews, they chose the wrong 
one, and old Tyre and Jerusalem were demolished at 
the same time. 

From that day the Phenicians began to go down 
the hill; and under the Persians their ships and sailors 
were forced to do service in the royal navy. This was 
the hardest kind of tribute that they could be made 
to pay, for it deprived them not only of their profits, 
but of the means by which those profits were obtained. 
In the Macedonian war they went wrong again; they 
chose the side of the Persians although they had so 
often rebelled against them, and Tyre was severely 
handled by its conqueror. But it was the foundation 
of Alexandria which ruined the Phenician cities, as it 
ruined Athens. From that time Athens ceased to be 
commercial, and became a University. Tyre also ceased 


100 CARTHAGE 


to be commercial, but remained a celebrated manufac- 
tory. Under the Roman empire it enjoyed the mo- 
nopoly of the sacred purple, which was afterwards 
adopted by the popes. It prospered under the caliphs; 
its manufactories in the middle ages were conducted by 
the Jews; but it fell before the artillery of the Turks to 
rise no more. The secret of the famous dye was lost, 
and the Vatican changed the colour of its robes. 

But while Phenicia was declining in the East, its 
great colony, Carthage, was rising in the West. This 
city had been founded by malcontents from Tyre. But 
they kindly cherished the memories of their Mother- ° 
land; and like the Pilgrim Fathers, always spoke of the 
country which had cast them forth as Home. And, 
after a time all the old wrongs were forgotten, all angry 
feelings died away. Every year the Carthaginians sent 
to the national temple a tenth part of their revenues as 
a free-will offering. During the great Persian wars, 
when on all sides empires and kingdoms were falling 
to the ground, the Pheenicians refused to lend their fleet 
to the Great King to make war upon Carthage. When 
Tyre was beseiged by Alexander, the nobles sent their 
wives and children to Carthage, where they were ten- 
derly received. 

The Africa of the ancients, the modern Barbary, 
lies between the Sahara and the Mediterranean Sea. 
It is protected from the ever-encroaching waves of the 
sandy ocean by the Atlas range. In its western parts 
this mountain wall is high and broad, and covered with 
eternal snow. It becomes lower as it runs towards the 
west, also drawing nearer to the sea, and dwindles and 
dwindles, till finally it disappears, leaving a wide, un- 
protected region between Barbary and Egypt. Over 
this the Sahara flows, forming a desert barrier tract to 
all intents and purposes itself a sea, dividing the two 
lands from each other as completely as the Mediter- 
ranean divides Italy and Greece. This land of North 


THE ATLAS 101 


Africa is in reality a part of Spain; the Atlas is the 
southern boundary of Europe; gray cork trees clothe 
the lower sides of those magnificent mountains; their 
summits are covered with pines, among which the cross- 
bill flutters, and in which the European bear may still 
be found. The flora of the range, as Dr Hooker has 
lately shown, is of a Spanish type, the Straits of 
Gibraltar is merely an accident; there is nothing in 
Morocco to distinguish it from Andalusia. The African 
animals which are there found, are desert-haunting 
species,—the antelope and gazelle, the lion, the jackal, 
and the hyena, and certain species of the monkey 
tribe; and these might easily have found their way 
across the Sahara from oasis to oasis. It is true that 
in the Carthaginian days the elephant abounded in the 
forests of the Atlas; and it could not have come across 
from Central Africa, for the Sahara before it was a 
desert, was a sea. It is probable that the elephant of 
Barbary belonged to the same species as the small ele- 
phant of Europe, the bones of which have been discov- 
ered in Malta and certain caves of Spain; and that it 
outlived the European kind on account of its isolated 
position in the Atlas, which was thinly inhabited by 
savage tribes. But it did not long withstand the power 
of the Romans. Pliny mentions that in his time the 
forests of Morocco were being ransacked for ivory, and 
Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century observes, that 
“there are no longer any elephants in Mauritania.” 

In Morocco the Pheenicians were settled only on the 
coast. The Regency of Tunis and part of Algeria is the 
scene on which the tragedy of Carthage was performed. 

In that part of Africa the habitable country must be 
divided into three regions; first, a corn region, lying be- 
tween the Atlas and the sea, exceedingly fertile, but 
narrow in extent; secondly, the Atlas itself, with its tim- 
ber stores and elephant preserves; and thirdly, a pla- 
teau region, of poor sandy soil, affording a meagre pas- 


102 THE BERBERS 


ture; interspersed with orchards of date trees; abound- 
ing in ostriches, lions, and gazelles, and gradually fad- 
ing away into the desert. 

Africa belonged to a race of men whom we shall call 
Berbers or Moors, but who were known to the ancients 
under many names, and who still exist as the Kabyles 
of Algeria, the Shilluhs of the Atlas, and the Tuaricks 
or tawny Moors of the Sahara. Their habits depended 
on the locality in which they dwelt. Those who lived 
in the Tell or region of the coast cultivated the soil 
and lived in towns, some of which appear to have been 
of considerable size. Those who inhabited the plateau 
region led a free Bedouin life, wandering from place to 
place with flocks and herds, camping under oblong huts, 
which the Romans compared to boats turned upside 
down. In holes and caverns of the mountains dwelt a 
miserable black race, apparently the aborigines of the 
country, and represented to this day by the Rock Tib- 
boos. They were also found on the outskirts of the 
desert, and were hunted by the Berbers in four-horse 
chariots, caught alive, and taken to the Carthage market 
to be sold. 

The Pheenician settlements were at first independent 
of one another; but Carthage gradually obtained the 
supremacy as Tyre had obtained it in Pheenicia. The 
position of Utica towards Carthage was precisely that 
of Sidon towards Tyre. It was the more ancient city 
of the two, and it preserved a certain kind of position 
without actual power. Carthage and Utica, like Tyre 
and Sidon, were at one time always spoken of together. 

The Carthaginians began by paying a quit-rent or 
Custom to the natives, but that did not last very long; 
they made war, and exacted tribute from the original 
possessors of the soil. When Carthage suffered from 
over-population, colonies were despatched out west 
along the coast, and down south into the interior. 
These colonies were more on the Roman than the Greek 


THE COLONIES OF CARTHAGE 103 


pattern; the emigrants built cities and inter-married 
freely with the Berbers; for there was no difference of 
colour between them and little difference of race. In 
course of time the whole of the habitable region was 
subdued; the Tyrian factory became a mighty empire. 
Many of the roving tribes were broken in; the others 
were driven into the desert or the wild Morocco. A 
line of fortified posts and block houses protected the 
cultivated land. The desire to obtain red cloth and 
amber and blue beads secured the allegiance of many 
unconquerable desert tribes, and by their means, al- 
though the camel had not yet been introduced, a trade 
was opened up between Carthage and Timbuctoo. 
Negro slaves bearing tusks of ivory on their shoulders 
and tied to one another, so as to form a chain of flesh 
and blood, were driven across the terrible desert; a 
caravan of death, the route of which was marked by 
bones bleaching in the sun. Gold dust also was brought 
over from those regions of the Niger; and the Cartha- 
ginian traders reached the same land by sea. For they 
were not content like the Tyrians to trade only on the 
Morocco Coast as far as Mogadore. By good fortune 
there has been preserved the log-book of an expedition 
which sailed to the wood-covered shores of Guinea; saw 
the hills covered with fire as they always are in the dry 
season, when the grass is being burnt; heard the music 
of the natives in the night, and brought home the skins 
of three Chimpanzees which they probably killed near 
Sierra Leone. 

When Pheenicia died, Carthage inherited its cattle! 
ments on the coasts of Sicily and Spain and on the 
adjoining isles. Not only were these islands valuable 
possessions in themselves, Malta as a cotton planta- 
tion, Elba as an iron mine, Majorca and Minorca as 
a recruiting ground for slingers; they were also useful 
as naval stations to preserve the monopoly of the 
western waters. 


104 CYRENE 


The foreign policy of Carthage was very different 
from that of the mother land. The Pheenicians had 
maintained an army of mercenaries, but had used them 
only to protect their country from the robber kings of 
Damascus and Jerusalem. They had many ships of 
war, but had used them only to convoy their round- 
bellied ships of trade, and to keep off the attacks of the 
Greek and Etruscan pirates. Their settlements were 
merely fortified factories; they made no attempt to 
reduce the natives of the land. If their settlements grew 
into colonies they let them go. But Carthage founded 
many colonies and never lost a single one. Situated 
amongst them, possessing a large fleet, it was able both 
to punish and protect: it defended them in time of war; 
it controlled them in time of peace. 

A policy of concession had not saved the Phcenicians 
from the Greeks; and now these same Greeks were 
settling in the west and displaying immense activity. 
The Carthaginians saw that they must resist or be 
ruined: and they went to war as a matter of business. 
They first put down the Etruscan rovers, in which 
undertaking they were assisted by the events which oc- 
curred on the Italian main. They next put a stop to the 
spread of the Greek power in Africa itself. 

Half-way between Algeria and Egypt, in the midst 
of the dividing sea of sand, is a coast oasis formed 
by a table land of sufficient height to condense the 
vapours which float over from the sea, and to chill 
them into rain. There was a hole in the sky above 
it, as the natives used to say. To this island-tract 
came a band of Greeks, directed thither by the oracle at 
Delphi, where geography was studied, as a part of the 
system. They established a city and called it Cyrene. 

The land was remarkably fertile, and afforded them 
three harvests in the course of the year. One was gath- 
ered on the coast meadows, which were watered by the 
streams that flowed down from the hills: a second on 


THE GARDENS OF THE HESPERIDES 105 
the hill sides; a third on the surface of the plateau, 
which was about two thousand feet above the level of 
the sea. Cyrenaica produced the silphium, or assa- 
foetida, which, like the balm of Gilead, was one of the 
specifics of antiquity, and which is really a medicine 
of value. It was found in many parts of the world, 
for instance, in certain districts of Asia Minor, and on 
the summit of the Hindoo Koosh. But the assafcetida 
of Cyrene was the most esteemed: its juice, when dried, 
was worth its weight in gold; its leaves fattened cattle, 
and cured them of all diseases. 

Some singular pits or chasms existed in the lower 
part of the Cyrene hills. Their sides were perpendic- 
ular walls of rock: it appeared impossible to descend 
to the bottom of the precipice; and yet, when the 
traveller peeped over the brink, he saw to his astonish- 
ment that the abyss beneath had been sown with herbs 
and corn. Hence rose the legend of the gardens of the 
Hesperides. 

Cyrene was renowned as the second medical school 
of the Greek world. It produced a noted free-thinker, 
who was a companion of Socrates, and the founder of 
a school. It was also famous for its barbs, which won 
more than one prize in the chariot races of the Grecian 
games. It obtained the honour of more than one 
Pindaric ode. But owing to internal dissension, it 
never became great. It was conquered by Persia, it sub- 
mitted to Alexander, and Carthage speedily checked its 
growth towards the west by taking the desert which lay 
between them, and which it then garrisoned with nomad 
tribes. 

The Carthaginians hitherto had never paid tribute, 
and they had never suffered a serious reverse. Alci- 
biades talked much of invading them when he had 
done with Sicily; and the young men of his set were 
at one time always drawing plans of Carthage in the 
dust of the market-place at Athens; but the Sicilian 


106 THE SICILIAN WARS 


expedition failed. The affection of the Tyrians pre- 
served them from Cambyses. Alexander opportunely 
died. Pyrrhus in Sicily began to collect ships to sail 
across, but he who tried to take up Italy with one 
hand and Carthage with the other, and who also excited 
the enmity of the Sicilian Greeks, was not a very dan- 
gerous foe. Agathocles of Syracuse invaded Africa, but 
it was the action of a desperate and defeated man, and 
bore no result. 

Sicily was long the battle-field of the Carthaginians, 
and ultimately proved their ruin. Its western side be- 
longed to them: its eastern side was held by a number 
of independent Greek cities, which were often at war 
with one another. Of these, Syracuse was the most im- 
portant: its ambition was the same as that of Carthage; 
to conquer the whole island, and then te extend its rule 
over the flourishing Greek towns on the south Italian 
coast. Hence followed wars generation after generation, 
till at length the Carthaginians obtained the upper hand. 
Already they were looking on the island as their own, 
when a new Power stepped upon the scene. 

The ancient Tuscans or Etruscans had a language 
and certain arts peculiar to themselves; and Northern 
Italy was occupied by Celtic Gauls. But the greater 
part of the peninsula was inhabited by a people akin 
to the Greeks, though differing much from them in 
character, dwelling in city states, using a form of the 
Pheenician alphabet, and educating their children in 
public schools. The Greek cities on the coast diffused 
a certain amount of culture through the land. 

A rabble of outlaws and run-away slaves banded to- 
gether, built a town, fortified it strongly, and offered 
it as an asylum to all fugitives. To Rome fled the over- 
beaten slave, the thief with his booty, the murderer with 
blood-red hands. This city of refuge became a War- 
town, to use an African phrase: its citizens alternately 
fought and farmed; it became the dread and torment 


THE ROMAN ROBBERS 107 


of the neighbourhood. However, it contained no women, 
and it was hoped that, in the course of time, the gen- 
eration of robbers would die out. The Romans offered 
their hands and hearts to the daughters of a neighbour- 
ing Sabine city. The Sabines declined, and told them 
that they had better make their city an asylum for 
run-away women. The Romans took the Sabine girls 
by force; a war ensued, but the relationship had been 
established; the women reconciled their fathers to their 
husbands, and the tribes were united in the same city. 

The hospitality which Rome had offered in its 
early days, in order to sustain its life, became a custom 
and a policy. The Romans possessed the art of con- 
verting their conquered enemies into allies, and this was 
done by means of concessions which cities of respectable 
origin would have been too proud to make. 

Their military career was very different from that of 
the Persians, who swept over a continent in a few 
months. The Romans spent three centuries in estab- 
lishing their rule within a circle of a hundred miles 
round the city. Whatever they won by the sword they 
secured by the plough. After every successful war they 
demanded a tract of land, and on this they planted a 
colony of Roman farmers. The municipal governments 
of the conquered cities were left undisturbed. The 
Romans aimed to establish, at least in appearance, a 
federation of states, a United Italy. At the time of 
the first Punic War, this design had nearly been accom- 
plished. Wild tribes of Celtic shepherds still roamed 
over the rich plains at the foot of the Alps; but the 
Italian boroughs had acknowledged the supremacy of 
Rome. The Greek cities on the southern coast had, a 
few years before, called over Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, 
a soldier of fortune, and the first general of the day. 
But the legion broke the Macedonian phalanx, and the 
broadsword vanquished the Macedonian spear. The 
Greek cities were no longer independent, except in 


108 THE MAMERTINES 


name. Pyrrhus returned to Greece and prophesied of 
Sicily, as he left its shores, that it would become the 
arena of the Punic and the Roman arms. 

In the last war that was ever waged between the 
Syracusans and the Carthaginians, the former had em- 
ployed some mercenary troops belonging to the Mamer- 
tines, an Italian tribe. When the war was ended these 
soldiers were paid off, and began to march home. They 
passed through the Greek town of Messina on their 
road, were hospitably received by the citizens, and pro- 
vided with quarters for the night. In the middle of the 
night they rose up and massacred the men, married the 
widows, and settled down as rulers of Messina, each 
soldier beneath another man’s vine and fig-tree. A 
Roman regiment, stationed at Rhegium, a Greek town 
on the Italian side of the straits, heard of this exploit, 
considered it an excellent idea, and did the same. The 
Romans marched upon Rhegium, took it by storm, and 
executed four hundred of the soldiers in the Forum. The 
King of Syracuse, who held the same position in eastern 
Sicily as Rome on the peninsula, marched against Mes- 
sina. The Mamertine bandits became alarmed: one 
party sent to the Carthaginians for assistance, another 
party sent to Rome, declaring that they were kinsmen, 
and desiring to enter the Italian league. 

The Roman Senate rejected this request on account 
of its “manifest absurdity.” They had just punished 
their soldiers for imitating the Mamertines: how, then, 
could they interfere with the punishment of the Mamer-. 
tines? But in Rome the people possessed the sovereign 
power of making peace or war. There was a scarcity 
of money at that time: a raid on Sicily would yield 
plunder; and troops were accordingly ordered to Mes-. 
sina. For the first time Romans went outside Italy: 
the vanguard of an army which subdued the world. The 
Carthaginians were already in Messina: the Romans. 
drove them out, and the war began. The Syracusans. 


THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS 109 


were defeated in the first battle, and then went over to 
the Roman side. It became a war between Asiatics and 
Europeans. | 

The two great republics were already well acquainted 
with each other. In the apartment of the Addiles in 
the capitol was preserved a commercial treaty between 
Carthage and Rome, inscribed on tables of brass, in 
old Latin; in the time of Polybius, it could scarcely 
be understood, for it had been drawn up twenty-eight 
years before Xerxes invaded Greece. When Pyrrhus 
invaded Italy, the Carthaginians had taken the Roman 
side, for the Greeks were their hereditary enemies. 
There were Carthaginian shops in the streets of Rome, 
a city in beauty and splendour far inferior to Carthage, 
which was called the metropolis of the western world. 
The Romans were a people of warriors and small 
farmers, quaint in their habits, and simple in their 
tastes. Some Carthaginian ambassadors were much 
amused at the odd fashion of their banquets, where the 
guests sang old ballads in turn, while the piper played, 
and they discovered that there was only one service of 
plate in Rome, and that each senator borrowed it when 
he gave a dinner. Yet there were already signs that 
Rome was inhabited by a giant race: the vast aaue- 
ducts had been constructed; the tunnel-like sewers had 
been hollowed out: the streets were paved with smooth 
and massive slabs. There were many temples and 
statues to be seen; each temple was the monument 
of a great victory; each statue was the memorial of 
a hero who had died for Rome. 

The Carthaginian army was composed entirely of 
mercenary troops. Africa, Spain, and Gaul were their 
recruiting grounds, an inexhaustible treasury of war- 
riors as long as the money lasted, which they received 
as pay. The Berbers were a splendid Cossack cavalry; 
they rode without saddle or bridle, a weapon in each 
hand; on foot they were merely a horde of savages 


110 ARMY OF CARTHAGE 


with elephant-hide shields, long spears, and bear skins 
floating from their shoulders. The troops of Spain 
were the best infantry that the Carthaginians possessed ; 
they wore a white uniform with purple facings; they 
fought with pointed swords. The Gauls were brave 
troops, but were badly armed; they were naked to the 
waist; their cutlasses were made of soft iron, and had to 
be straightened after every blow. The Balearic islands 
supplied a regiment of slingers, whose balls of hardened 
clay whizzed through the air like bullets, broke armour, 
and shot men dead. We read much of the Sacred Legion 
in the Sicilian wars. It was composed of young nobles, 
who wore dazzling white shields and breast-plates which 
were works of art; who, even in the camp, never drank 
except from goblets of silver and of gold. But this corps 
had apparently become extinct, and the Carthaginians 
only officered their troops, whom they looked upon as 
ammunition, and to whom their orders were delivered 
through interpreters. The various regiments of the 
Carthaginian army had therefore nothing in common 
with one another, or with those by whom they were 
led. They rushed to battle in confusion, “with sounds 
discordant as their various tribes,” and with no higher 
feeling than the hope of plunder, or the excitement which 
the act of fighting arouses in the brave soldier. 

In Rome the army was the nation: no citizen could 
take office unless he had served in ten campaigns. All 
spoke the same language; all were inspired by the same 
ambition. The officers were often small farmers like 
the men; but this civil equality produced no ill effects; 
the discipline was most severe. It was a maxim that 
the soldier should fear his officer more than he feared 
his foe. The drill was unremitting; when they were 
in winter quarters they erected sheds in which the sol- 
diers fenced with swords cased in leather, with buttons 
at the point, and hurled javelins, also buttoned, at one 
another. These foils were double the weight of the 


HOME RULE OF CARTHAGE 111i 


weapons that were actually used. When the day’s 
march was over, they took pick-axe and spade, and built 
their camp like a town with a twelve-foot stockade 
around it, and a ditch twelve feet deep, and twelve 
feet broad. When the red mantle was hung before the 
general’s tent, each soldier said to himself: ‘Perhaps 
to-day I may win the golden crown.” Laughing and 
jesting they rubbed their limbs with oil, and took out 
of their cases the bright helmets and the polished shields 
which they used only on the battle-day. As they stood 
ready to advance upon the foe, the general would ad- 
dress them in a vigorous speech: he would tell them 
that the greatest honour which could befall a Roman 
was to die for his country on the field, and that glorious 
was the sorrow, enviable the woe of the matron who 
gave a husband or a son to Rome. Then, the trumpets 
pealed; and the soldiers charged, first firing a volley 
of javelins, and then coming to close quarters with the 
cold steel. The chief fault of the Roman military 
system at that time was in the arrangement of the 
chief command. There were two commanders-in-chief, 
possessing equal powers, and it sometimes happened 
that they were both present on the same spot, that 
they commanded on alternate days, and that their 
tactics differed. They were appointed only for the 
year, and when the term drew near its end, a consul 
would often fight a battle at a disadvantage, or nego- 
tiate a premature peace, that he might prevent his 
successor from reaping the fruits of his twelve months’ 
toil. The Carthaginian generals had thereby an advan- 
tage; but they also were liable to be recalled when too 
successful by the jealous and distrustful Government at 
home. 

The finances of Carthage were much greater than 
those of Rome, but her method of making war was 
more costly and a great deal of money was stolen and 
wasted by the men in power. In Carthage the highest 


112 HOME RULE OF ROME 


offices of state were openly bought from a greedy and 
dangerous populace just as in Pompey’s time tables were 
set out in the streets of Rome at which candidates for 
office paid the people for their votes. But at this time 
bribery was a capital offence at Rome. It was a happy 
period in Roman history, the interlude between two 
aristocracies. There had been a time when a system of 
hereditary castes prevailed; when the plebeians were 
excluded from all share in the public lands, and the 
higher offices of state; when they were often chained in 
the dungeons of the nobles, and marked with scars upon 
their backs: when Romans drew swords on Romans, and 
the tents of the people whitened the Sacred Hill. But 
the Licinian Laws were carried: the orders were recon- 
ciled: plebeian Consuls were elected; and two centuries 
of prosperity, harmony and victory prepared Rome for 
the prodigious contest in which she was now engaged. 

To her subject people, Carthage acted as a tyrant. 
She had even deprived the old Phenician cities of their 
liberty of trade. She would not allow them to build 
walls for fear they should rebel, loaded them with 
heavy burdens grievous to be borne, treated the colonial 
provinces as conquered lands and sent decayed nobles, 
as governors, to wring out of the people all they could. 
If the enemies of Carthage invaded Africa, they would 
meet with no resistance except from Carthage herself; 
and they would be joined by thousands of Berbers who 
longed to be revenged on their oppressors. But if the 
enemies of Rome invaded Italy they would find every- 
where walled cities ready to defend their liberties and 
having liberties to defend. No tribute was taken by 
Rome from her allies except that of military service: 
which service was rewarded with a share of the harvest 
that the war brought in. 

The Carthaginians were at a greater distance from 
the seat of war than the Romans who had only to sail 
across & narrow strait. However this was counter- 


THE FIRST NAVAL BATTLE 113. 


balanced by the superiority of the Punic fleet. At that 
time the Carthaginians were completely masters of the 
sea: they boasted that no man could wash his hands in 
the salt water without their permission. The Romans 
had not a single decked vessel, and in order to transport 
their troops across the straits they were obliged to bor- 
row triremes from the Italian-Greeks. But their mar- 
vellous resolution and the absolute necessities of the 
case overmastered their deficiencies and their singular 
dislike of the sea. The wreck of a Carthaginian man- 
of-war served them as a model: they ranged benches 
along the beach and drilled sailors who had just come 
from the plough’s tail to the service of the oar. The 
vessels were rudely built and the men clumsy at their 
work and when the hostile fleets first met, the Cartha- 
ginians burst into loud guffaws. Without taking order 
of battle they flew down upon the Romans, the 
admiral leading the van in a seven-decker that had 
belonged to Pyrrhus; on they went, each ship in a bed 
of creamy foam, flags flying, trumpets blowing, and the 
negroes singing and clanking their chains as they la- 
boured at the oar. But presently they perceived some 
odd-looking machines on the forecastles of the Roman 
ships: they had never seen such things before: and this 
made them hesitate a little. But when they saw in what. 
a lubberly fashion the ships were worked, their confi- 
dence returned; they dashed in amongst the Roman 
vessels which they tried to rip up with their aquiline 
prows. As soon as they came to close quarters the 
machines fell down upon them with a crash, tore open 
their decks and grappled them tightly in their iron Jaws, 
forming at the same time a gangway over which the 
Roman soldiers poured. The sea fight was made a land 
fight; and only a few ships with beaks all bent and 
broken succeeded in making their escape. They entered 
the harbour of Carthage, their bows covered with skins, 


the signal of defeat. 


114 END OF THE FIRST PUNIC WAR 


However, by means of skilful manceuvering, the 
invention of Duilius was made of no avail, and the 
Carthaginians for many years remained the masters of 
the sea. Twice the Roman fleet was entirely destroyed; 
and their treasury was now exhausted. But the un- 
daunted people fitted out a fleet by private subscription, 
and so rapidly was this done that the trees, as Florus 
said, were transformed into ships. Two hundred five- 
deckers were ready before the enemy knew they had 
begun to build; and so the Carthaginian fleet was one 
day surprised by the Romans in no fighting condition, 
for the vessels were laden to the gunwales with corn, 
and only sailors were on board; the whole fleet was 
taken or sunk, and the war was at an end. Yet, when 
all was added up, it was found that the Romans had 
lost two hundred vessels more than the Carthaginians. 
But Rome, even without large ships, could always re- 
inforce Sicily; while the Carthaginians, without a full 
fleet, were completely cut off from the seat of war; 
and they were unable to rebuild in the manner of the 
Romans. 

The war in Sicily had been a drawn game. Hamil- 
car Barca, although unconquered, received orders to 
negotiate for peace. The Romans demanded a large 
indemnity to pay for the expenses of the war; and took 
the Sicilian settlements which Carthage had held four 
hundred years. 

Peace was made, and the mercenary troops were sent 
back to Carthage. Their pay was in arrears, and there 
was no money left. Matters were so badly managed 
that the soldiers were allowed to retain their arms. 
They burst into mutiny, ravaged the country, and be- 
sieged the capital. The veterans of Hamilcar could only 
be conquered by Hamilcar himself. He saved Carthage, 
but the struggle was severe. Venerable senators, ladies 
of gentle birth, innocent children had fallen into the 
hands of the brutal mutineers and had been crucified, 


THE MERCENARY WAR 115 


torn to pieces, tortured to death in a hundred ways. 
During those awful orgies of Spendius and Matho, the 
Roman war had almost been forgotten; the disasters 
over which men had mourned, became by comparison 
happiness and peace. The destruction of the fleet was 
viewed as a slight calamity when death was howling at 
the city gates. At last Hamilcar triumphed, and the 
rebels were cast to the elephants who kneaded their 
bodies with their feet and gored them with their tusks; 
and Carthage, exhausted, faint from loss of blood, at- 
tempted to repose. 

But all was not yet over. The troops that were 
stationed in Sardinia rebelled, and Hamilcar prepared to 
sail with an armament against them. 

The Romans had acted in the noblest manner 
towards the Carthaginians during the civil war. The 
Italian merchants had been allowed to supply Carthage 
with provisions, and had been forbidden to communi- 
cate with the rebels) When the Sardinian troops 
mutined, they offered the island to Rome; the city of 
Utica had also offered itself to Rome; but the Senate 
had refused both applications. And now all of a sud- 
den, as if possessed by an evil spirit, they pretended 
that the Carthaginian armament had been prepared 
against Rome, and declared war. When Carthage, in 
the last stage of misery and prostration, prayed for 
peace in the name of all the pitiful gods, it was granted. 
But Rome had been put to some expense on account 
of this intended war; they must therefore pay an addi- 
tional indemnity, and surrender Corsica and Sardinia. 
Poor Carthage was made to bite the dust indeed. 

Hamilcar Barca was appointed commander-in-chief. 
He was the favourite of the people. He had to the 
last remained unconquered in Sicily. He had saved the 
city from the mutineers. His honour was unstained: 
his patriotism was pure. 

In that hour of calamity and shame, when the city 


116 THE CITY IN BLACK 


was hung with black; when the spacious docks were 
empty and bare; when there was woe in every face, and 
the memory of death in every house, faction was forced 
to be silent, and the people were permitted to be heard, 
and those who loved their country more than their 
party rejoiced to see a Man at the head of affairs. But 
Hamilcar knew that he was hated by the leaders of the 
Government, the politicians by profession, those men 
who had devoured the gold which was the very heart 
of Carthage, and had brought upon her by their dis- 
honesty this last distressing war; those men who, by 
their miserable suspicions and intrigues, had ever de- 
prived their best generals of their commands as soon 
as they began to succeed, and appointed generals whom 
they—and the enemy—had no cause to fear. To him 
was intrusted by the patriots the office of regenerating 
Carthage. But how was it to be done? Without 
money he was powerless: without money he could not 
keep his army together; without money he could not 
even retain his command. He had been given it by the 
people; but the people were accustomed to be bribed. 
Gold they must have from the men in power: if he had 
-none to give, they would go to those who had. His 
enemies he knew would be able to employ the state 
revenues against him. What could he do? Where was 
the money to be found? He saw before him nothing but 
defeat, disgrace, and even an ignominious death; for 
in Carthage they sometimes crucified their generals. 
Often he thought that it would be better to give up 
public life, to abandon the corrupt and ruined city, and 
to sail for those sweet islands which the Carthaginians 
had discovered in the Atlantic Sea. There the earth 
was always verdant; the sky was always pure. No fiery 
sirocco blew, and no cold rain fell in that delicious land. 
Odoriferous balm dripped from the branches of the 
trees; canary birds sang among the leaves; streams of 
silver water rippled downwards to the sea. There Na- 


THE PLANS OF HAMILCAR 117 


ture was a calm and gentle mother: there the turmoils 
of the world might be forgotten; there the weary heart 
might be at rest. 

Yet how could he desert his fatherland in its afflic- 
tion? To him the nation turned its sorrowful eyes; on 
him the people called as men call upon their gods. At 
his feet lay the poor, torn, and wounded Carthage; the 
Carthage once so beautiful and so strong; the Carthage 
who had fed him from her full breast with riches and 
with power; the Carthage who had made him what he 
was. And should he, who had never turned his back | 
upon her enemies, desert her now? 

Then a glorious idea flashed in upon his brain. He 
saw a way of restoring Carthage to her ancient glory; 
of making her stronger than she had ever been; of mak- 
ing her a match for Rome. He announced to the senate 
that he intended to take the army to Tangiers to reduce 
a native tribe which had caused some trouble in the 
neighbourhood. He quickly made all the arrangements 
for the march. A few vessels had been prepared for the 
expedition to Sardinia. These were commanded by his 
brother; and he ordered that these should be sailed 
along the coast side by side with the army as it marched. 
It might have appeared strange to some persons that 
he should require ships to make war against a tribe of 
Moors on land. But there was no fear of his enemies 
suspecting his design. It was so strange and wild, that 
when it had been actually accomplished, they could 
scarcely believe that it was real. 

The night before he marched he went to the Great 
Temple to offer the sacrifice of propitiation and en- 
treaty. He took with him his son, a boy nine years of 
age. When the libations and other rites were ended, 
and the victim lay divided on the altar, he ordered the 
attendants to withdraw; he remained alone with his son. 

The temple of Baal was a magnificent building, sup- 
ported by enormous columns, covered with gold, or 


118 THE BOY’S OATH 


formed of a glass-like substance, which began to glitter 
and sparkle in a curious manner as the night came on. 
Around the temple walls were idols representing the 
Pheenician gods; prominent amongst them was the 
hideous statue of Moloch, with its downward sloping 
hands, and the fiery furnace at its feet. There also 
might be seen beautiful Greek statues, trophies of the 
Sicilian wars, especially the Diana which the Cartha- 
ginians had taken from Segesta, which was afterwards 
restored to that city by the Romans, which Verres 
placed in his celebrated gallery, and Cicero in his cele- 
brated speech. There also might be seen the famous 
brazen bull which an Athenian invented for the amuse- 
ment of Phalaris. Human beings were put inside; a 
fire was lit underneath; and the throat was so contrived, 
that the shrieks and groans of the victims made the bull 
bellow as if he was alive. The first experiment was 
made by King Phalaris upon the artist; and the last 
by the people upon King Phalaris. 

Hamilcar caressed his son and asked him if he would 
like to go to the war: when the boy said Yes, and 
showed much delight, Hamilcar took his little hands and 
placed them upon the altar and made him swear that 
he would hate the Romans to his dying day. Long years 
afterwards, when that boy was an exile in a foreign 
land, the most glorious, the most unfortunate of men, 
he was accused by his royal host of secretly intriguing 
with the Romans. He then related this circumstance, 
and asked if it was likely that he would ever be a friend 
to Rome. | 

Hamilcar marched. The politicians supposed that he 
was merely engaged in a third-rate war, and were quite 
easy in their minds. But one day there came a courier 
from Tangiers. He brought tidings which plunged the 
whole city in a tumult of wonder and excitement. The 
three great streets which led to the market-place were 
filled with streaming crowds. A multitude collected 


SILVER SPAIN 119. 


round the city hall, in which sat the Senators anxiously 
deliberating. Women appeared on the roofs of the 
houses and bent eagerly over the parapets, while men 
ran along bawling out the news. Hamilcar Barca had 
gone clean off. He was no longer in Africa. He had 
crossed the sea. The Tangier expedition was a trick. 
He had taken the army right over into Spain, and was 
fighting with the native chiefs who had always been the 
friends and allies of Carthage. : 

By a strange fortuity, Spain was the Peru of the 
ancient world. The horrors of the mines in South 
America, the sufferings of the Indians, were copied, so 
to speak, from the early history of the people who in- 
flicted them. When the Pheenicians first entered the 
harbours of Andalusia, they found themselves in a land 
where silver was used as iron. They loaded their vessel 
with the precious metal to the water’s edge, cast away 
their lead-weighted anchor, and substituted a lump of 
pure silver in its stead. Afterwards factories were 
established; arrangements were made with the chiefs for 
the supply of labour, and the mining was conducted on 
scientific principles. The Carthaginians succeeded the 
Pheenicians and remained, like them, only on the coast. 

It was Hamilcar’s design to conquer the whole coun- 
try, to exact tribute from the inhabitants, to create a 
Spanish army. His success was splendid and complete. 
The peninsula of Spain became almost entirely a Punic 
province. Hamilear built a city which he called New 
Carthage, the Carthagena of modern times, and discov- 
ered in its neighbourhood rich mines of silver-lead, 
which have lately been re-opened. He acquired a private 
fortune, formed a native army, fed his party at Car- 
thage, and enriched the treasury of the State. He ad- 
ministered the province nine years, and then dying, was 
succeeded by his brother, who, after governing or reign- 
ing a few years, also died. Hannibal, the son of Hamil- 
car, became Viceroy of Spain. 


120 HANNIBAL 


It appears strange that Rome should so tamely have 
allowed the Carthaginians to take Spain. The truth 
was that the Romans, just then, had enough to do to 
look after their own affairs. The Gauls of Lombardy 
had furiously attacked the Italian cities, and had called 
to their aid the Gauls who lived beyond the Alps. Be- 
fore the Romans had beaten off the barbarians, the con- 
quest in Spain had been accomplished. The Romans, 
therefore, accepted the fact, and contented themselves 
with a treaty by which the government of Carthage 
pledged itself not to pass beyond the Ebro. 

But Hannibal cared nothing about treaties made at 
Carthage. As Hamilcar, without orders, had invaded 
Spain, so he, without orders, invaded Italy. The expedi- 
tion of the Gauls had shown him that it was possible 
to cross the Alps, and he chose that extraordinary route. 
The Roman army was about to embark for Spain, 
which, it was supposed, would be the seat of war, when 
the news arrived that Hannibal had alighted in Italy, 
with elephants and cavalry, like a man descending from 
the clouds. 

If wars were always decided by individual exploits 
and pitched battles, Hannibal would have conquered 
Italy. He defeated the Romans so often and so thor- 
oughly, that at last they found it their best policy not 
to fight with him at all. He could do nothing then but 
sweep over the country with his Cossack cavalry, 
plunder, and destroy. It was impossible for him to take 
Rome, which was protected by walls strong as rocks, 
and by rocks steep as walls. When he did march on 
Rome, encamping within three miles of the city, and 
raising a panic during an afternoon, it was done merely 
as a ruse to draw away the Roman army from the siege 
of Capua. But it did not have even that effect. The 
army before Capua remained where it was, and another 
army appeared, as if by magic, to defend the city. 


SCIPIO 121 


Rome appeared to be inexhaustible, and so in reality it 
was. | 

Hannibal knew well that Italy could be conquered 
only by Italians. So great a general could never have 
supposed that, with a handful of cavalry, he could sub- 
due a country which had a million armed men to bring 
into the field. He had taken it for granted that if he 
could gain some success at first he would be joined by 
the subject cities. But in spite of his great victories, 
they remained true to Rome. Nothing shows so clearly 
the immense resources of the Italian Republic as that 
second Punic war. Hannibal was in their country, but 
they employed against him only a portion of their 
troops; a second army was in Sicily waging war against 
his Greek allies; a third army was in Spain, attacking 
his operations at the base, pulling Carthage out of 
Europe by the roots. Added to which, it was now the 
Romans who ruled the sea. When Scipio had taken 
New Carthage and conquered Spain, he crossed over 
into Africa, and Hannibal was of necessity recalled. He 
met, on the field of Zama, a general whose genius was 
little inferior to his own, and who possessed an infinitely 
better army. Hannibal lost the day, and the fate of 
Carthage was decided. It was not the battle which 
did that: it was the nature and constitution of the 
State. In itself, the battle of Zama was not a more 
ruinous defeat than the battle of Cannz. But Carthage 
was made of different stuff from that of Rome. How 
could a war between those two people have ended other- 
wise than as it did? Rome was an armed nation fight- 
ing in Italy for hearth and home, in Africa for glory 
and revenge. Carthage was a city of merchants, who 
paid men to fight for them, and whose army was dis- 
solved as soon as the exchequer was exhausted. Rome 
could fight to its last man: Carthage could fight only to 
its last dollar. At the beginning of both wars the Car- 
thaginians did wonders; but as they became poor they 


122 FALL OF CARTHAGE 


became feeble; their strength dribbled out with their 
gold; the refusal of Alexandria to negotiate a loan per- 
haps injured them more deeply than the victory of 
Scipio. 

The fall of the Carthaginian empire is not a matter 
for regret. Outside the walls of the city existed hopeless 
slavery on the part of the subject, shameless extortion 
on the part of the officials. Throughout Africa Carthage 
was never named without a curse. In the time of the 
mercenary war, the Moorish women, taking oath to 
keep nothing back, stripped off their gold ornaments 
and brought them all to the men who were resisting 
their oppressors. That city, that Carthage, fed like a 
vulture upon the land. A corrupt and grasping aristoc- 
racy, a corrupt and turbulent populace, divided between 
them the prey. The Carthaginian customs were bar- 
barous in the extreme. When a battle had been won 
they sacrificed their handsomest prisoners to the gods; 
when a battle had been lost, the children of their noblest 
families were cast into the furnace. Their Asiatic char- 
acter was strongly marked. They were a people false 
and sweet-worded, effeminate and cruel, tyrannical and 
servile, devout and licentious, merciless in triumph, 
faint-hearted in danger, divinely heroic in despair. 

Let us therefore admit that, as an imperial city, 
Carthage merited her fate. But henceforth we must 
regard her from a different point of view. In order to 
obtain peace, she had given up her colonies abroad, her 
provinces at home, her vessels and elephants of war. 
‘The empire was reduced to a municipality. Nothing 
was left but the city and a piece of ground. The mer- 
chant princes took off their crowns and went back into 
the glass and purple business. It was only as a town 
of manufacture and trade that Carthage continued to 
exist, and as such her existence was of unmixed service 
to the world. 

Hannibal was made prime minister, and at once set 


MASINISSA 123 


to work to reform the constitution. The aristocratic 
party informed the Romans that he was secretly stirring 
up the people to war. The Romans demanded that he 
should be surrendered; he escaped to the court of Anti- 
ochus, the Greek King in Asia Minor, and there he 
did attempt to raise war against Rome. The senate 
were justified in expelling him from Carthage, for he 
was really a dangerous man. But the persecution to 
which he was afterwards subjected was not very cred- 
itable to their good fame. Driven from place to place, 
he at last took refuge in Bithynia, on the desolate shores 
of the Black Sea; and a Roman consul, who wished to 
obtain some notoriety by taking home the great Car- 
thaginian as a show, commanded the prince, under 
whose protection he was living, to give him up. When 
Hannibal heard of this, he took poison, saying, “Let me 
deliver the Romans from their cares and anxieties since 
they think it too tedious and too dangerous to wait for 
the death of a poor hated old man.” The news of this 
occurrence excited anger in Rome; but it was the 
presage of a greater crime, which was soon to be com- 
mitted in the Roman name. 

There was a Berber chief named Masinissa who had 
been deprived of his estates, and who, during the war, 
had rendered important services to Rome. He was 
made King of Numidia, and it was stipulated in the 
treaty that the Carthaginians should restore the lands 
and cities which had belonged to him and to his an- 
cestors. The lands which they had taken from him were 
accordingly surrendered, and then Masinissa sent in a 
claim for certain lands which he said had been taken 
from his ancestors. The wording of the treaty was am- 
biguous. He might easily declare that the whole of the 
sea-coast had belonged to his family in ancient times; 
and who could disprove the evidence of a tradition? 
He made no secret of his design; it was to drive the 
Phenician strangers out of Africa, and to reign at Car- 


124 ROME IN THE EAST 


thage in their stead. He soon showed that he was 
worthy to be called the King of Numidia and the 
Friend of Rome. He drilled his bandits into soldiers; 
he taught his wandering shepherds to till the ground. 
He made his capital, Constantine, a great city; he 
opened schools in which the sons of native chiefs were 
taught to read and write in the Punic tongue. He allied 
himself with the powers of Morocco and the Atlas. He 
reminded the Berbers that it was to them the soil be- 
longed; that the Phcenicians were intruders who had 
come with presents in their hands and with promises in 
their mouths, declaring that they had met with trouble 
in their own country, and praying for a place where they 
might repose from the weary sea. Their fathers had 
trusted them; their fathers had been bitterly deceived. 
By force and by fraud the Carthaginians had taken all 
the lands which they possessed; they had stolen the 
ground on which their city stood. 

In the meantime Rome advanced into the East. As 
soon as the battle of Zama had been fought, Alexandria 
demanded her protection. This brought the Romans 
into contact with the Greco-Asiatic world; they found 
it in much the same condition as the English found 
Hindostan, and they conquered it in much the same 
manner. 

Time went on. The generation of Hannibal had 
almost become extinct. In Carthage war had become 
a tradition of the past. The business of that city was 
again as flourishing as it had ever been. Again ships 
sailed to the coast of Cornwall and Guinea; again the 
streets were lined with the workshops of industrious 
artisans. Such is the vis medicatriz, the restoring power 
of a widely extended commerce, combined with active 
manufactures and the skilful management of soil, that 
the city soon regained its ancient wealth. The Romans 
had imposed an enormous indemnity, which was to be 


CATO THE CENSORIOUS 125 


paid off by instalments extending over a series of years. 
The Carthaginians paid it off at once. 

But in the midst of all their prosperity and happiness 
there were grave and anxious hearts. They saw ever 
before them the menacing figure of Masinissa. The 
very slowness of his movements was portentous. He 
was in all things deliberate, gradual, and calm. From 
time to time he demanded a tract of land: if it was not 
given up at once, he took it by force. Then, waiting 
as if to digest it, he left them for a while in peace. 

They were bound by treaty not to make war against 
the Friends of Rome. They therefore petitioned the 
senate that commissioners should be sent, and the boun- 
dary definitely settled. But the senate had no desire 
that Carthage should be left in peace. The commis- 
sioners were instructed to report in such a manner that 
Masinissa might be encouraged to continue his depreda- 
tions. They brought back astonishing accounts of the 
magnificence and activity of the African metropolis; 
and among these commissioners there was one man who 
never ceased to declare that the country was in danger, 
and who never rose to speak in the House without say- 
ing before he sat down: “And it is my ommion, fathers, 
that Carthage must be destroyed.” 

Cato the censor has been called the last of the old 
Romans. That class of patriot farmers had been extin- 
guished by Hannibal’s invasion. In order to live during 
the long war they had been obliged to borrow money 
on their lands. When the war was over, the prices of 
everything rose to an unnatural height; the farmers 
could not recover themselves, and the Roman law of 
debt was severe. They were ejected by thousands: it 
was the favourite method to turn the women and chil- 
dren out of doors while the poor man was working in 
the fields. Italy was converted into a plantation: slaves 
in chains tilled the land. No change was made in the 
letter of the constitution, but the commonwealth ceased 


126 ROMANS A LA MODE 


to exist. Society was now composed of the nobles, the 
money-merchants or city men, and a mob like that of 
Carthage which lived on saleable votes, sometimes rag- 
ing for agrarian laws, and which was afterwards fed at 
government expense like a wild beast every day. 

At this time a few refined and intellectual men be- 
gan to cultivate a taste for Greek literature and the 
fine arts. They collected libraries, and adorned them 
with busts of celebrated men, and antiques of Corin- 
thian bronze. Crowds of imitators soon arose, and the 
conquests in the East awakened new ideas. In the days 
of old, the Romans had been content to decorate their 
door-posts with trophies obtained in single combat, and 
their halls with the waxen portraits of their ancestors. 
The only spoils which they could then display were 
flocks and herds, waggons of rude structure, and heaps 
of spears and helmets. But now the arts of Greece 
and the riches of Asia adorned the triumphs of their 
generals; and the reign of taste and luxury commenced. 
A race of Dandies appeared, who wore semi-transparent 
robes, and who were always passing their hands in an 
affected manner through their hair; who lounged with the 
languor of the Sybarite, and spoke with the lisp of Alci- 
biades. The wives of senators and bankers became 
genteel, kept a herd of ladies’ maids, passed hours before 
their full-length silver mirrors, bathed in asses’ milk, 
rouged their cheeks, and dyed their hair, never went out 
except in palanquins, gabbled Greek phrases, and called 
their slaves by Greek names, even when they happened 
to be of Latin birth. The houses of the great were 
paved with Mosaic floors, and the painted walls were 
works of art: side-boards were covered with gold and 
silver plate, with vessels of amber, and the tinted Alex- 
andrine glass. The bath-roams were of marble, with the 
water issuing from silver tubes. 

New amusements were invented; and new customs 
began to reign. An academy was established, in which 


THE ROMAN BADEN-BADEN 127 


five hundred boys and girls were taught castanet dances, 
of anything but a decorous kind. The dinner hour was 
made later; and instead of sitting at table, they adopted 
the style of lying down to eat on sofas inlaid with 
tortoise-shell and gold. It was chiefly in the luxuries 
of the cuisine that the Romans exhibited their wealth. 
Prodigious prices were paid for a good Greek cook. 
Every patrician villa was a castle of gastronomical de- 
light: it was provided with its salt water tank for fish 
and oysters, and an aviary which was filled with field- 
fares, ortolans, nightingales, and thrushes; a white dove- 
cot, like a tower, stood beside the house, and beneath 
it was a dark dungeon for fattening the birds; there 
was also a poultry ground, with pea-fowl, guinea-fowl, 
and pink feathered flamingoes imported from the East, 
while an orchard of fig-trees, honey-apples, and other 
fruits, and a garden in which the trees of cypress and 
yew were clipped into fantastic shapes, conferred an 
aspect of rural beauty on the scene. The hills round 
the Bay of Naples were covered with these villas; and 
to that charming region it became the fashion to resort 
at a certain season of the year. In such places gam- 
bling, drinking, and love-making shook off all restraints. 
Black-eyed Soubrettes tripped perpetually about with 
billets-doux in Greek: the rattle of the ivory dice-box 
could be heard in the streets, like the click of billiard 
balls in the Parisian boulevards; and many a boat with 
purple sails, and with garlands of roses twined round its 
mast, floated softly along the water, laughter and sweet 
music sounding from the prow. 

Happily for Cato’s peace of mind, he died before the 
casino with its cachucha, or cancan, or whatever it 
might have been, was introduced, and before the fash- 
ions of Asia had been added to those of Greece. But 
he lived long enough to see the Greco-maniacs trium- 
phant. In earlier and happier days he had been able to 
expel two philosopuers from Rome; but now he saw 


128 CATO’S LITTLE FARM 


them swarming in the streets with their ragged cloaks 
and greasy beards, and everywhere obtaining seats as 
domestic chaplains at the tables of the rich. He could 
now do no more than protest in his bitter and extrava- 
gant style against the corruption of the age. He 
prophesied, that as soon as Rome had thoroughly im- 
bibed the Greek philosophy she would lose the empire 
of the world: he declared that Socrates was a prating, 
seditious fellow, who well deserved his fate; and he 
warned his son to beware of the Greek physicians, for 
the Greeks had laid a plot to kill all the Romans, and 
the doctors had been deputed to put it into execution 
with their medicines. 

Cato was a man of an iron body, which was covered 
with honourable scars, a loud, harsh voice, greenish- 
grey eyes, foxy hair, and enormous teeth, resembling 
tusks. His face was so hideous and forbidding, that, 
according to one of the hundred epigrams that were 
composed against him, he would wander for ever on the 
banks of the Styx, for hell itself would be afraid to let 
him in. He was distinguished as a general, as an orator, 
and as an author; but he pretended that it was his chief 
ambition to be considered a good farmer. He lived in 
a little cottage on his Sabine estate, and went in the 
morning to practise as an advocate in the neighbouring 
town. When he came home he stripped to the skin, 
and worked in the fields with his slaves, drinking, as 
they did, the vinegar-water, or the thin sour wine. In 
the evening he used to boil the turnips for his supper 
while his wife made the bread. Although he cared so 
little about external things, if he gave an entertainment, 
and the slaves had not cooked it or waited to his liking, 
he used to chastise them with leather thongs. It was 
one of his maxims to sell his slaves when they grew old, 
the worst cruelty that a slave-owner can commit. “For 
my part,” says Plutarch, “I should never have the heart 


A DISSOLUTE PRIG 129 


to sell an ox that had grown old in my service, still less 
my aged slave.” 

Cato’s old-fashioned virtue paid very well. He 
gratified his personal antipathies, and obtained the char- 
acter of the people’s friend. He was always impeaching 
the great men of his country, and was himself im- 
peached nearly fifty times. The man who sets up as 
being much better than his age is always to be sus- 
pected; and Cato is perhaps the best specimen of the 
rugged hypocrite and austere charlatan that history can 
produce. This censor of morals bred slaves for sale. 
He made laws against usury, and then turned usurer 
himself. He was always preaching about the vanity of 
riches, and wrote an excellent work on the best way of 
getting rich. He degraded a Roman knight for kissing 
his wife in the day-time in the presence of his daughter, 
and he himself, while he was living under his daughter- 
in-law’s roof, bestowed his favours on one of the servant 
girls of the establishment, and allowed her to be impu- 
dent to her young mistress. “Old age,’ he once said 
to a grey-headed debauchee, “has deformities enough 
of its own. Do not add to it the deformity of vice.” At 
the time of the amorous affair above mentioned Cato 
was nearly eighty years of age. 

On the other hand, he was a most faithful servant 
to his country; he was a truly religious man, and his 
god was the Commonwealth of Rome. Nor was he 
destitute of the domestic virtues, though sadly deficient 
in that respect. He used to say that those who beat 
their wives and children laid their sacrilegious hands 
on the holiest things in the world. He educated his son 
himself, taught him to box, to ride, to swim, and wrote 
out for him a history of Rome in large pothook char- 
acters, that he might become acquainted at an early 
age with the great actions of the ancient Romans. He 
was as careful in what he said before the child as if he 
had been in the presence of the vestal virgins. 


130 THE ALARMIST 


This Cato was the man on whom rests chiefly the 
guilt of the Murder which we must now relate. In 
public and in private, by direct denunciation, by skilful 
innuendo, by appealing to the fears of some and to the 
interests of others, he laboured incessantly towards his 
end. Once, after he had made a speech against Car- 
thage in the senate, he shook the skirt of his robe as 
if by accident, and some African figs fell upon the 
ground. When all had looked and wondered at their 
size and beauty, he observed that the place where they 
grew was only three days’ sail from Rome. 

It is possible that Cato was sincere in his alarms, 
for he was one of the few survivors of the second Punic 
war. He had felt the arm of Carthage in its strength. 
He could remember that day when even Romans had 
turned pale; when the cold men covered their faces with 
their mantles; when the young men clambered on the 
walls; when the women ran wailing round the temples 
of the gods, praying for protection, and sweeping the 
shrines with their hair; when a cry went forth that 
Hannibal was at the gates! when a panic seized the city; 
when the people, collecting on the roofs, flung tiles at 
Roman soldiers, believing them to‘be the enemy already 
in the town; when all over the Campagna could be 
seen the smoke of ricks and farmhouses mounting in the 
air, and the wild Berber horsemen driving herds of 
cattle to the Punic camp. 

Besides, it was his theory that the annihilation of 
foreign powers was the building up of Rome. He used 
to boast that, in his Peninsular Campaign, he had de- 
molished a Spanish town a day. There were in the 
senate many enlightened men, who denied that the 
prosperity of Rome could be assisted by the destruction 
of trading cities; and Carthage was defended by the 
Scipio party. But the influence of the banker class was 
employed on Cato’s side. They wanted every penny 
that was spent in the Mediterranean world to pass 


THE MONEYED INTEREST 131 


through their books. Carthage and Corinth were rival 
firms which it was to their profit to destroy. These 
money-mongers possessed great power in the senate and 
the state, and at last they carried the day. It was pri- 
vately resolved that Carthage should be attacked as 
soon as an opportunity occurred. 

Thus in Africa and in Italy Masinissa and Cato pre- 
pared the minds of men for the deed of blood. It was 
as if the Furies of the slaughtered dead had entered 
the bodies of those two old men and kept them alive 
beyond their natural term. Cato had done his share. 
It was now Masinissa’s turn. As soon as he was assured 
that he would be supported by the Romans he struck 
again and again the wretched people, who were afraid 
to resist, and yet who soon saw that it would be folly 
to submit. It was evident that Rome would not inter- 
fere. If Masinissa was not checked, he would strip them 
of their cornfields; he would starve them to death. The 
war party at last prevailed: the city was fortified and 
armed. Masinissa descended on their villas, their gar- 
dens, and their farms. Driven to despair, the Cartha- 
ginians went forth to defend the crops which their own 
hands had sown. A great battle was fought and Mas- 
inissa was victorious. 

On a hill near the battle field sat a young Roman 
officer, Scipio A’milianus, a relative of the man who 
had defeated Hannibal. He had been sent over from 
Spain for a squadron of elephants, and arrived in 
Masinissa’s camp at this interesting crisis. The news 
of the battle was soon despatched by him to Rome. 
The treaty had now been broken, and the senate de- 
clared war. : 

The Carthaginians fell into an agony of alarm. 
They were now so broken down that a vassal of Rome 
could defeat them in the open field. What had they 
to expect in a war with Rome? Ambassadors were at 
once despatched with full powers to obtain peace—peace 


132 PEACE AT ANY PRICE 


at any price—from the terrible Republic. The 
envoys presented themselves before the Senate: they 
offered the submission of the Carthaginians, who 
formally disowned the act of war, who had put the 
two leaders of the war-party to death, who desired 
nothing but the alliance and good-will of Rome. The 
answer which they received was this. “Since the 
Carthaginians are so well advised, the Senate returns 
them their country, their laws, their sepulchres, their 
liberties, and their estates, if they will surrender three 
hundred sons of their senators as hostages, and obey 
the orders of the consuls.” 

The Roman army had already disembarked. When 
the consuls landed on the coast no resistance was 
made. They demanded provisions. Then the city gates 
were opened, and long trains of bullocks and mules, 
laden with corn, were driven to the Roman camp. The 
hostages were demanded. Then the senators brought 
forth their children and gave them to the city; the 
city gave them to the Romans; the Romans placed 
them on board the galleys, which at once spread their 
sails and departed from the coast. The roofs of the 
palaces of Carthage were crowded with women who 
watched those receding sails with straining eyes and 
outstretched arms. Never more would they see their 
beloved ones again. Yet they would not, perhaps, 
have grieved so much at the children leaving Carthage 
had they known what was to come. 

The city gates again opened. The Senate sent its 
council to the Roman camp. A company of venerable 
men clad in purple, with golden chains, presented 
themselves at head-quarters and requested to know 
what were the “orders of the consuls.” They were told 
that Carthage must disarm. They returned to the 
city and at once sent out to the camp all their fleet- 
material and artillery, all the military stores in the 
public magazines, and all the arms that could be found 


THE ORDERS OF THE CONSULS 133 


in the possession of private individuals. Three thou- 
sand catapults and two hundred thousand sets of 
armour were given up. 

They again came out to the camp. The military 
council was assembled to receive them. ‘The old 
men saluted the Roman ensigns, and bowed low to the 
consuls, placing their hands upon their breasts. The 
orders of the consuls, they said, had been obeyed. Was 
there anything more that their lords had to command? 

The senior consul rose up and said that there was 
something more. He was instructed by the Roman 
Senate to inform the senators of Carthage that the 
city must be destroyed . . . but that, in accord- 
ance with the promise of the Roman Senate, their 
country, their laws, their sepulchres, their liberties, 
and their estates would be preserved, and _ they 
might build another city. Only it must be without 
walls, and at a distance of at least ten miles from the sea. 

The Carthaginians cast themselves upon the ground, 
and the whole assembly fell into confusion. The 
Consul explained that he could exercise no choice: he 
had received his orders, and they must be carried out. 
He requested them to return and apprise their fellow- 
townsmen. Some of the senators remained in the 
Roman camp: others ventured to go back. When they 
drew near the city the people came running out to meet 
them, and asked them the news. They answered only 
by weeping and beating their foreheads, and stretch- 
ing out their hands and calling on the gods. They went 
on to the senate house: the members were summoned: 
an enormous crowd gathered in the market-place. 
Presently the doors opened; the senators came forth; 
and the orders of the consuls were announced. 

And then there rose in the air a fierce despairing 
shriek, a yell of agony and rage. The mob rushed 
through the city, and tore limb from limb the Italians 
who were living in the town. With one voice it was 


134 SIEGE OF CARTHAGE 


resolved that the city should be defended to the last. 
They would not so tamely give up their beautiful: Car- 
thage, their dear and venerable home beside the sea. 
If it was to be burnt to ashes, their ashes should be 
mingled with it, and their enemies’ as well. 

All the slaves were set free. Old and young, rich 
and poor, worked together day and night forging arms. 
The public buildings were pulled down to procure 
timber and metal. The women cut off their hair to 
make strings for the catapults. A humble message 
was sent in the true Oriental style to the Consul, pray- 
ing for a little time. Days passed, and Carthage gave 
no signs of life. Tired of waiting, the Consul marched 
towards the city, which he expected to enter like an 
open village. He found to his horror the gates closed, 
and the battlements bristling with artillery. 

Carthage was strongly fortified, and, it was held by 
men who had abandoned hope. The siege lasted more 
than three years. Cato did not live to see his darling 
wish fulfilled. Masinissa also died while the siege was 
going on, and bitter was his end. The policy of the 
Romans had been death to all his hopes. His dream 
of a great African empire was dissolved. He sullenly 
refused to co-operate with the Romans: it was his 
Carthage which they had decreed should be levelled 
to the ground. 

There was a time when it seemed as if the great 
city would prove itself to be impregnable; the siege 
was conducted with small skill or vigour by the 
Roman generals. More than one reputation found its 
grave before the walls of Carthage. But when Scipio 
/fmilianus obtained the command, he at once displayed 
the genius of his house. Perceiving that it would be 
impossible to subdue the city as long as smuggling 
traders could run into the port with provisions, he con- 
structed a stone mole across the mouth of the har- 
bour. Having thus cut off the city from the sea, he 


REIGN OF TERROR 135 


pitched his camp on the neck of the isthmus, for 
Carthage was built on a peninsula, and so cut it off 
completely from the land. For the first time in the 
siege, the blockade was complete: the city was enclosed 
in a stone and iron cage. The Carthaginians in their 
fury brought forth the prisoners whom they had taken 
in their sallies, and hurled them headlong from the 
walls. There were many in the city who protested 
against this outrage. They were denounced as traitors: 
a Reign of Terror commenced; the men of the moderate 
party were crucified in the streets. The hideous idol 
of Moloch found victims in that day; children were 
placed on its outstretched and downward sloping hands 
and rolled off them into the fiery furnace which was 
burning at its feet. Nor were there wanting patriots 
who sacrificed themselves upon the altars, that the 
gods might have compassion upon those who survived. 
But among these pestilence and famine had begun to 
work; and the sentinels could scarcely stand to their 
duty on the walls. Gangs of robbers went from house 
to house and tortured people to make them give up 
their food; mothers fed upon their children; a terrible 
disease broke out; corpses lay scattered in the streets; 
men who were burying the dead fell dead upon them; 
others dug their own graves, and laid down in them 
to die; houses in which all had perished were used as 
public sepulchres, and were quickly filled. 

And then, as if the birds of the air had carried the 
news, it became known all over Northern Africa that 
Carthage was about to fall. And then from the dark. 
and dismal corners of the land, from the wasted fron- 
tiers of the desert, from the snow lairs and caverns of 
the Atlas, there came creeping and crawling to the coast 
the most abject of the human race—black, naked, 
withered beings, their bodies covered with red paint, 
their hair cut in strange fashions, their language com- 
posed of muttering and whistling sounds. By day they 


136 THE ASSAULT 


prowled round the camp, and fought with the dogs for 
the offal and the bones. If they found a skin, they 
roasted it on ashes, and danced round it in glee, 
wriggling their bodies, and uttering abominable cries. 
When the feast was over, they cowered together on 
their hams, and fixed their gloating eyes upon the city, 
and expanded their blubber lips, and showed their white 
fangs. 

At last the day came. The harbour walls were 
carried by assault, and the Roman soldiers pressed into 
the narrow streets, which led down to the water side. 
The houses were six or seven storeys high; and each 
house was a fortress, which had to be stormed. Lean 
and haggard creatures, with eyes of flame, defended 
their homesteads from room to room, onwards, upwards, 
to the death struggle on the broad flat roof. 

Day followed day, and still that horrible music did 
not cease; the shouts and songs of the besiegers, the 
yells and shrieks of the besieged, the moans of the 
wounded, the feeble cries of children divided by the 
sword. Night followed night, and still the deadly work 
went on: there was no sleep and no darkness; the 
Romans lighted houses, that they might see to kill. 

Six days passed thus; and only the citadel was 
left. It was a steep rock in the middle of the town; 
a temple of the God of Healing crowned its summit. 

The rock was covered with people, who could be 
seen extending their arms to heaven, and uniting with 
one another in the last embrace. Their piteous 
lamentations, like the cries of wounded animals, as- 
cended in the air, and behind the iron circle which 
enclosed them could be heard the crackling of the 
fire and the dull boom of falling beams. 

The soldiers were weary with smiting: they were 


filled with blood. Nine-tenths of the inhabitants had ~ 


been already killed. The people on the rock were 
offered their lives; they descended with bare hands, 


THE FIELD OF BLOOD 137 


and passed under the yoke. Some of them ended their 
days in prison; the greater part were sold as slaves. 

But in the temple on the summit of the rocky hill 
nine hundred Roman deserters, for whom there could 
be no pardon, stood at bay. The trumpets sounded; 
the soldiers clashing their bucklers with their swords, 
and uttering the war-cry, alala! alala! advanced to 
the attack. Of a sudden the sea of steel recoiled: 
the standards reeled; a long tongue of flame sprang 
forth upon them through the temple door. The 
deserters had set the building on fire, that they might 
escape the ignominious death of martial law. 

A man dressed in purple rushed out of the temple 
with an olive branch in his hand. This was Has- 
drubal, the commander-in-chief, and the Robespierre of 
the Reign of Terror. His life was given him; he 
would do for the triumph. And as he bowed the knee 
before the consul, a woman appeared on the roof of 
the temple with two children in her arms. She 
poured forth some scornful words upon her husband, 
then plunged with her children into the flames. 

Carthage burned seventeen days before it was 
entirely consumed. Then the plough was passed over 
the soil to put an end in legal form to the existence 
of the city. House might never again be built, corn 
might never again be sown upon the ground where it 
had stood. A hundred years afterwards Julius Cesar 
founded another Carthage, and planted a Roman colony 
therein. But it was not built upon the same spot; 
the old site remained accursed; it was a browsing ground 
for cattle, a field of blood. When recently the remains 
of the city walls were disinterred, they were found to be 
covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet 
deep, filled with half charred pieces of wood, fragments 
of iron, and projectiles. 

The possessions of the Carthaginians were formed 
into a Roman province, which was called Africa. 


138 JUGURTHA AND JUBA 


The governor resided at Utica, which, with the other 
old Phcenician towns, received municipal rights, but 
paid a fixed stipend to the state exchequer. The 
territory of Carthage itself became Roman domain land, 
and was let on lease. Italian merchants flocked to 
Utica in great numbers and reopened the inland trade; 
but the famous sea trade was not revived. The Britons 
of Cornwall might in vain gather on high places and 
strain their eyes towards the west. The ships which 
had brought them beads and purple cloth would come 
again no more. 

A descendant of Masinissa, who inherited his genius, 
defied the Roman power in a long war. He was 
finally conquered by Sylla and Marius, caught, and 
carried off to Rome. Apparelled in barbaric splen- 
dour, he was paraded through the streets. But when 
the triumph was over, his guards rushed upon him and 
struggled for the finery in which he had been dressed. 
They tore the rings from his ears with such force that 
the flesh came away; they cast him naked into a dun- 
geon under ground. “O Romans, you give me a cold 
bath!” were the last words of the valiant Jugurtha. 

The next Numidian prince who appeared at a 
triumph was the young Juba, who had taken the side 
of Pompey against Cesar. “It proved to be a happy 
captivity for him,” says Plutarch, “for of a barbarous 
and unlettered Numidian, he became an_ historian 
worthy to be numbered amongst the learned men of 
Greece.” 

When the Empire became established the kingdom 
of Numidia, of Cyrene, and of Egypt were swept away. 
Africa was divided into seven fruitful provinces, rang- 
ing along the coast from Tripoli to Tangiers. Egypt 
was made a province, with the tropical line for its 
southern frontier. The oasis of Cyrene, with its fields — 
of assafcetida, was a middle station between the two. 
But still the history of Northern Africa and the history 


ROME IN AFRICA 139 


of Egypt remain distinct. The Roman Empire, though 
held together for a time by strong and skilful hands, 
was divided by customs and modes of thought arising 
out of language, into the Greek and Latin worlds. In 
the countries which had been civilised by the Romans, 
Latin had been introduced. In the countries which, be- 
fore the Roman conquest, had been conquered by Alex- 
ander, the Greek language maintained its ground. 
Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and Cyrene 
belonged to the Greek world: Italy, Gaul, Spain, and 
Africa belonged to the Latin world. Greek was never 
spoken in Roman Carthage except by a few merchants 
and learned men. Latin was never spoken in Alexandria 
except in the law courts and at Government House. 
Whenever there was a partition of the empire, Egypt 
was assigned to one emperor, Carthage to the other. In 
the church history of Africa, the same phenomenon may 
be observed. The church of Africa was the daughter 
of the church of Rome, and was chiefly occupied with 
questions of discipline and law. The church of Egypt 
was essentially a Greek church; it was occupied entirely 
with definitions of the undefinable, and solutions of 
problems in theology. 

In one respect, however, the histories of Egypt and 
Africa are the same. They were both of them corn- 
fields, and both of them were ruined by the Romans. 
In the early days of the empire there was a noble reform 
in provincial affairs resembling that which Clive accom- 
plished in British India, when he visited that country 
for the last time. There was then an end to that tyrant 
of prey who under the republic had contrived in a few 
years to extort an enormous fortune from his procon- 
sulate, and who was often accompanied by a wife more 
rapacious than himself; who returned to Rome with 
herds of slaves, and cargoes of bullion and of works of 
art. Governors were appointed with fixed salaries; the 


140 THE ROMAN CORN-FIELD 


Roman law was everywhere introduced; vast sums of 
money were expended on the public works. 

Unhappily this did not last. Rome was devoured 
by a population .of mean whites, the result of foreign 
slavery, which invariably degrades labour. This vast 
rabble was maintained by the State; rations of bread 
and oil were served out to it every day. When the 
evil time came, and the exchequer was exhausted, the 
governors of Africa and Egypt were required to send 
the usual quantity of grain all the same, and to obtain 
their percentage as best they could. They were trans- 
formed into satraps or pachas. The great land-owners 
were accused of conspiracy, and their estates escheated 
to the crown. The agriculturists were reduced to serf- 
dom. There might be a scarcity of food in Africa, but 
there must be none in Rome. Every year were to be 
seen the huge ships lying in the harbours of Alexandria 
and Carthage, and mountains of corn piled high upon 
the quays. When the seat of empire was transferred 
to the Bosphorus, the evil became greater still. Each 
province was forced to do double work. There was 
now a populace in Constantinople which was fed entirely 
by Egypt, and Africa supported the populace of Rome. 
While the Egyptian fellah and the Moorish peasant 
were labouring in the fields, the sturdy beggars of 
Byzantium and Rome were amusing themselves at the 
circus, or basking on marble in the sun. 

But Africa was not only a plantation of corn and oil 
for their imperial majesties, the Italian lazzaroni. It 
also contained the preserves of Rome. The lion was a 
royal beast; it was licensed to feed upon the flock of 
the shepherd, and upon the shepherd himself if it pre- 
ferred him. The unfortunate Moor could not defend 
his life without a violation of the game laws, which 
were quite as ferocious as the lion. It will easily be 
imagined that the Roman rule was not agreeable to the 
native population. They had fallen beneath a power 


VANDALS AT ROME 141 


compared with which that of the Carthaginians was 
feeble and kind; which possessed the strength of civiliza- 
tion without its mercy. But when that power began 
to decline they lifted up their heads, and joined the 
foreign invaders as soon as they appeared, as their 
fathers had joined the Romans in the ancient days. 

These invaders were the Vandals, a tribe of Germans 
from the North, who had conquered Spain and who, 
now pouring over the Gibraltar Straits, took Carthage 
and ruled there a hundred years. The Romans strug- 
gled hard to regain their corn-fields, and the old duel 
of Rome and Carthage was resumed. This time it was 
Carthage that was triumphant. It repelled the Romans 
when they invaded Africa. It became a naval power, 
scoured the Mediterranean, reconquered Sicily and 
Sardinia, plundered the shores of Italy, and encamped 
beneath the mouldering walls of Rome. The gates of 
the city were opened; and the bishop of Rome, attended 
by his clergy, came forth in solemn procession to offer 
the submission of Rome, and to pray for mercy to the 
churches and the captives. Doubtless, in that army of 
Germans and Moors, by whom they were received, there 
were men of Pheenician descent who had read in history 
of a similar scene. Rome was more fortunate than an- 
cient Carthage: the city was sacked, but it was not 
destroyed. Not long afterwards it was taken by the 
Goths. Kings, dressed in furs, sat opposite each other 
on the thrones of Carthage and of Rome. 

The Emperor of the East sent the celebrated Beli- 
Sarius against the Carthaginian Vandals who had be- 
come corrupted by luxury, and whom he speedily sub- 
dued. Thus Africa was restored to Rome: but it was 
a Greek-speaking Rome; and the citizens of Carthage 
still felt themselves to be under foreign rule. Besides, 
the war had reduced the country to a wilderness. One 
might travel for days without meeting a human being 
in those fair coast lands which had once been filled 


142 AFRICAN INFLUENCE 


with olive groves, and vineyards, and fields of waving 
corn. The savage Berber tribes pressed more and more 
fiercely on the cultivated territory which still remained. 
It is probable that, if the Arabs had not come, the Moors 
would have driven the Byzantines out of the land, or 
at least have forced them to remain as prisoners behind 
their walls. 

With the invasion of the Arabs, the proper history 
of Africa begins. It is now that we are able for the 
first time to leave the coasts of the Mediterranean and 
the banks of the Nile, and to penetrate into that vast 
and mysterious world, of which the ancient geographers 
had but a faint and incorrect idea. 

It is evident enough from the facts which have been 
adduced in the foregoing sketch, that Egypt and Car- 
thage contributed much to the Human Progress: Egypt 
by instructing Greece; Carthage by drawing forth Rome 
to the conquest of the world. 

But these countries did little for Africa itself. The 
ambition of Egypt was with good reason turned towards 
Asia: that of Carthage towards Europe. The influence 
of Carthage on the regions of the Niger was similar to 
that of Egypt on the negro regions of the Nile. In each 
case it became the fashion for the native chiefs to wear 
Egyptian linen, or the Tyrian purple, and to decorate 
their wives with beads, which are often discovered by 
the negroes of the present day in ancient and forgotten 
graves. Elephants were hunted, and gold pits were 
dug, in Central Africa, that these luxuries might be pro- 
cured; but the chief article of export was the slave; and 
this commodity was obtained by means of war. The 
negroes have often been accused of rejecting the civiliza- 
tion of the Egyptians and Carthaginians, but they were 
never brought into contact with those people. The inter- 
course between them was conducted by the intermediate 
Berber tribes. 

Those Berber tribes who inhabited the regions ad- 


THE AFRICAN CHURCH 143 


joining Egypt and Cyrene, appear to have been in some 
degree improved. But they were a roving people, and 
civilisation can never ripen under tents. Something, 
however, was accomplished among those who were settled 
in cities or the regions of the coast. That the Berber 
race possesses a remarkable capacity for culture has 
been amply proved. It is probable that Terence was a 
Moor. It is certain that Juba, whose works have been 
unfortunately lost, was of unmixed Berber blood. Read- 
ing and writing were common among them, and they 
used a character of their own. When the Romans took 
Carthage they gave the public library and archives to 
the Berber chiefs. At one time it seemed as if Barbary 
was destined to become a civilized province after the 
pattern of Spain and Gaul. Numidian princes adopted 
the culture of the Greeks; and Juba was placed on his 
ancestral throne that he might tame his wild subjects 
into Roman citizens. But this movement soon perished, 
and the Moorish chiefs fell back into their bandit life. 

The African Church has obtained imperishable fame. 
In the days of suffering it brought forth martyrs whose 
fiery ardour and serene endurance have never been sur- 
passed. In the days of victory it brought forth minds, 
by whose imperial writings thousands of cultivated men 
have been enslaved. But this church was, for the most 
part, confined to the walled cities on the coast, to the 
farming villages in which the Punic speech was still 
preserved, and to a few Moorish tribes who lived under 
Roman rule. In the days of St Augustine, Christianity 
was in its zenith: and St Augustine complains that there 
were hundreds of Berber chiefs who had never heard 
the name of Christ. Even in Roman Africa, the triumph 
of Christianity was not complete. In Carthage itself, 
Astarte and Moloch were still adored; and a bare-footed 
monk could not show himself in the streets without being 
pelted by the populace. At a later date, the Moorish 
tribes became an heretical and hostile sect; the religious 


144 AFRICA’S PLACE IN HISTORY 


persecutions of the Arian Vandals were succeeded by 
the persecutions of the Byzantine Greeks. Christianity 
was divided and almost dead when the Arabs appeared: 
and the Church which had withstood ten imperial perse- 
cutions, succumbed to the tax which the conquerors 
imposed on ‘the people of the book.” 

The failure of Christianity in Africa was owing to 
the imperfection of the Roman conquest. Their occupa- 
tion was of a purely military kind and it did not embrace 
an, extensive area. The Romans were entirely distinct 
from the natives in manners and ideas. It was natural 
that the Berbers should reject the religion of a people 
whose language they did not understand, whose tyranny 
they detested, and whose power most of them defied. 
But the Arabs were accustomed to deserts; they did not 
settle, like the Romans and Carthaginians, on the coast; 
they covered the whole land; they penetrated into the 
recesses of the Atlas; they pursued their enemies into 
the depths of the Sahara. But they also mingled persua- 
sion with force. They believed that the Berbers were 
Arabs like themselves and invited them, as kinsmen, to 
accept the mission of the prophet. They married the 
daughters of the land; they gathered round their stan- 
dards the warriors whom they had defeated, and led 
them to the glorious conquest of Spain. The two people 
became one; the language and religion of the Arabs 
were accepted by the Moors. 

With this event, the biography of ancient Africa is 
closed, and the history of Asiatic Africa begins. But 
I have in this work a two-fold story to unfold. I have 
to describe The Dark Continent; to show in what way 
it is connected with Universal History; what it has re- 
ceived, and what it has contributed to the development 
of man. And I have also to sketch in broad outline 
the human history itself. This task has been forced 
upon me in the course of my inquiries. It is impossible 
to measure a tributary and to estimate its value with 


CIVILIZING WAR 145 


precision, except by comparing it with the other affluents, 
and by carefully mapping the main stream. In writ- 
ing a history of Africa I am compelled to write the 
history of the world, in order that Africa’s true position 
may be defined. And now passing to the general ques- 
tions discussed in this chapter, it will be observed that: 
War is the chief agent of civilisation in the period which 
I have attempted to portray. It was war which drove 
the Egyptians into those frightful deserts, in the midst 
of which their Happy Valley was discovered. It was 
war which, under the Persians, opened lands which had 
been either closed against foreigners, or jealously held 
ajar. It was war which colonised Syria and Asia Minor 
with Greek ideas, and which planted in Alexandria the 
experimental philosophy which will win for us in time 
the dominion of the earth. It was war which united 
the Greek and Latin worlds into a splendid harmony 
of empire. And when that ancient world had been over- 
come by languor, and had fallen into oriental sleep; 
when nothing was taught in the schools which had not 
been taught a hundred years before; when the rapacity 
of tyrants had extinguished the ambition of the rich 
and the industry of the poor; when the Church also had 
become inert, and roused itself only to be cruel—then 
again came War across the Rhine and the Danube and 
the Alps, and laid the foundations of European life 
among the ruins of the Latin world. In the same manner 
Asia awoke as if by magic, and won back from Europe 
the lands which she had lost. But this latter conquest, 
though effected by means of war, was preserved by means 
of Religion, an element of history which must be ana- 
lysed with scientific care. In the next chapter I shall 
explain the origin of the religious sentiment and theory 
in savage life. I shall sketch the early career of the 
three great Semitic creeds, and the characters of three 
men—Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet—who, whatever may 
have been their faults, are entitled to the eternal grati- 


146 PROSPECTUS 


tude of the human race. Then, resuming the history 
of Africa, I shall follow the course of Islam over the 
Great Desert into the Soudan, and shall describe its 
progress in that country by means of the sword and 
of the school, something of which I have seen and studied 
under both forms. 


CHAPTER II. 
RELIGION. 


WHEN the poet invokes in his splendid frenzy the shin- 
ing spheres of heaven, the murmuring fountains, and 
the rushing streams; when he calls upon the earth to 
hearken, and bids the wild sea listen to his song; when 
he communes with the sweet secluded valleys and the 
haughty-headed hills, as if those inanimate objects were 
alive, as if those masses of brute matter were endowed 
with sense and thought, we do not smile, we do not 
sneer, we do not reason, but we feel. A secret chord is 
touched within us: a slumbering sympathy is awakened 
into life. Who has not felt an impulse of hatred, and 
perhaps expressed it in a senseless curse against a fiery 
stroke of sunlight, or a sudden gust of wind? Who has 
not felt a pang of pity for a flower torn and trampled 
in the dust; a shell dashed to fragments by the waves? 
Such emotions or ideas last only for a moment: they do 
not belong to us; they are the fossil fancies of a bygone 
age; they are a heritage of thought from the childhood 
of our race. For there was a time when they possessed 
the human mind. There was a time when the phrases of 
modern poetry were the facts of ordinary life. There 
was a time when man lived in fellowship with nature, 
believing that all things which moved or changed had 
minds and bodies kindred to his own. 

To those primeval people the sun was a great being, 
who brightened them in his pleasure, and who scorched 
them in his wrath. The earth was a sleeping monster: 
sometimes it rose a little and turned itself in bed. They 

147 


148 THE LIVE ELEMENTS 


walked upon its back when living; they were put into 
its belly when they died. Fire was a savage animal, 
which bit when it was touched. The birds and beasts 
were foreigners, possessing languages and customs of 
their own. The plants were dumb creatures, with char- 
acters good or bad, sometimes bloomy in aspect, malig- 
nant in their fruit, sometimes dispensing wholesome food 
and pleasant shade. 

These various forms of nature they treated precisely 
as if they had been men. ‘They sometimes adorned 
a handsome tree with bracelets like a girl: they offered 
up prayers to the fruit trees, and made them presents 
to coax them to a liberal return. They forbade the de- 
struction of certain animals which they revered on 
account of their wisdom, or feared on account of their 
fierceness, or valued on account of their utility. They 
submitted to the tyranny of the more formidable 
beasts of prey, never venturing to attack them, for fear 
the nation or species should retaliate; but made them 
propitiatory gifts. In the same manner they offered 
sacrifices to avert the fury of the elements, or in erati- 
tude for blessings which had been bestowed. But often 
& courageous people, when invaded, would go to war, not 
only with the tiger and the bear, but with powers which, 
to them, were not less human-like and real. They would 
cut with their swords at the hot wind of the desert, hurl 
their spears into the swollen river, stab the earth, flog 
the sea, shoot their arrows at the flashing clouds, and 
build up towers to carry heaven by assault. 

But when through the operation of the Law of Growth 
the intellectual faculties of men become improved, they 
begin to observe their own nature, and in course of time 
a curious discovery is made. They ascertain that there 
is something which resides within them entirely inde- 
pendent and distinct from the body in which it is con- 
tained. They perceive that it is this mind, or soul, or 
genius, or spirit, which thinks, and desires, and decides. 


DREAM REVELATION 149 


It commands the body, as the chief. commands the slave. 
While the body is asleep, it is busy weaving thoughts 
in the sleeper’s brain, or wanders into other lands, and 
converses with people whom he, while awake, has never 
seen. They hear words of wisdom issuing from the 
toothless mouth of a decrepit old man. It is evident 
that this soul does not grow old; and therefore it does 
not die. The body, it is clear, is only a garment which 
is in time destroyed, and then where does its inmate go? 

When a loved one has been taken, she haunts the 
memory of him who weeps till the image imprinted on 
the heart is reflected on the curtain of the eye. Her 
vision appears; not when he is quite asleep, as in an 
ordinary dream; but as he is passing into sleep. He 
meets her in the twilight land which divides the world 
of darkness from the world of day. He sees her form 
distinctly; he clasps it in his arms; he hears the accents 
of her sweet and gentle voice; he feels the pressure of 
her lips upon his own, He awakes, and the illusion is 
dispelled; yet with some it is so complete that they firmly 
believe it was a spirit whom they saw. 

Among savages it is not Love which can thus excite 
the imagination and deceive the sense; but reverence 
and fear. The great chief is dead. His vision appears 
in a half-waking dream: it threatens and it speaks. The 
dreamer believes that the form and the voice are real; 
and therefore he believes that the great chief still exists. 
It is thus that the grand idea is born. There is life 
after death. When the house or garment of the body is 
destroyed, the soul wanders forth into the air. Like 
the wind, it is unseen; like the wind, it can be soft and 
kind; like the wind, it can be terrible and cruel. The 
savage then believes that the pains of sickness are in- 
flicted by the hand which so often inflicted pain 
upon him when it was in the flesh; and he also 
believes that, in battle, the departed warrior is still fight- 
ing with unseen weapons at the head of his own clan. 


150 GHOST WORSHIP 


In order to obtain the good-will of the Father-spirit, 
prayers are offered up to him, and food is placed beside 
his grave. He is, in fact, still recognised as king, and 
to such phantom monarchs the distinctive title of God 
is assigned. Each chief is deified and worshipped when 
he dies. The offerings and prayers are established by 
rule: the reigning chief becomes the family priest; he 
pretends to receive communications from the dead, and 
issues laws in their name. The deeds of valour which 
the chiefs performed in their lifetime are set to song; 
their biographies descend from generation to generation, 
changing in their course, and thus a regular religion 
and mythology are formed. 

It is the nature of man to reason from himself out- 
wards. The savage now ascribes to the various forms 
of matter souls or spirits, such as he imagines that he 
has discovered in himself. The food which he places 
at the grave has a soul or essence, and it is this which 
is eaten by the spirit of the dead, while the body of 
the food remains unchanged. The river is now mere 
water, which may dry up and perish, but there dwells 
within it a soul which never dies: and so with every- 
thing that lives and moves, from the blade of grass 
which shivers in the wind, to the star which slowly 
moves across the sky. But as men become more and 
more capable of general ideas, of classing facts into 
systems, and of arranging phenomena into groups, they 
believe in a god of the forests, a god of the waters, and 
a god of the sky, instead of ascribing a separate god to 
every tree, to every river, and to every star. Nature 
is placed under the dominion of a Federation of Deities. 
In some cases the ancestor gods are identified with these; 
in others, their worship is kept distinct. The trees and 
the animals which were once worshipped for themselves 
from love or fear, are now supposed to be objects of 
affection to the gods, and are held sacred for their sake. 

These gods are looked upon as kings. Their char- 


GHOSTS BECOME GODS 151 


acters are human, and are reflected from the minds of 
those who have created them. Whatever the arithme- 
tical arrangement of the gods may be—single or triune, 
dual or plural—they are in all countries and in all times 
made by man in his own image. In the plural period, 
some of the gods are good, and some are bad; just as 
there are good and evil kings. The wicked gods can 
be softened by flattery and presents: the good ones can 
be made fierce by neglect. The wicked gods obtain the 
largest offerings and the longest prayers, just as in des- 
potic countries, the wicked kings obtain the most liberal 
presents—which are merely taxes in disguise. 

The savage has been led by indigestion and by dreams 
to believe in the existence of the soul after death, or, 
using simpler language, to believe in ghosts. At first 
these souls or ghosts have no fixed abode; they live 
among the graves. At a later period the savage invents 
a world to which the ghosts depart, and in which they 
reside. It is situated under ground. In that world the 
ghosts live precisely as they lived on earth. There is 
no retribution and no reward for the actions of the 
earthly life; that life is merely continued in another 
region of the world. Death is in fact regarded as a 
migration in which, as in all migrations, the emigrants 
preserve their relative positions. When a man of im- 
portance dies, his family furnish him with an outfit 
of slaves and wives, and pack up in his grave his arms 
and ornaments and clothes, that he may make his ap- 
pearance in the under-world in a manner befitting his 
rank and fortune. It is believed that the souls of the 
clothes, as well as of the persons sacrificed, accompany 
him there; and it is sometimes believed that all the 
clothes which he has worn in his life will then have 
their resurrection day. 

The under-world and the upper-world are governed 
by the same gods, or unseen kings. Man’s life in the 
upper-world is short: his life in the under-world is long. 


152 DIVINE HYBRIDS 


But as regards the existence of the worlds themselves, 
both are eternal, without beginning and without end. 
This idea is not a creation of the ripened intellect as is 
usually supposed. “It is a product of limited experience, 
the expression of a seeming fact. The savage did not 
see the world begin: therefore it had no beginning. He 
has not seen it grow older: therefore it will have no 
end. | 
The two worlds adjoin each other, and the frontier 
between them is very faintly marked. The gods often 
dress themselves in flesh and blood and visit the earth 
to do evil or to do good: to make love to women, to 
torment their enemies, to converse with their favourites 
and friends. On the other hand, there are men who 
possess the power of leaving their bodies in their beds 
and of passing into the other world to obtain divine 
poisons which they malignantly employ. The ghosts of 
the dead often come and sit by their old fire-sides and 
eat what is set apart for them. Sometimes a departed 
spirit will re-enter the family, assuming a body which 
resembles in its features the one he previously wore. 
Distinguished heroes and prophets are often supposed 
to be hybrids or mulattoes, the result of a union between 
& woman and a god. Sometimes it is believed that a 
god has come down on earth, out of love for a certain 
nation, to offer himself up as a sacrifice, and so to quench 
the blood-thirst of some sullen and revengeful god who 
has that nation in his power. Sometimes a savage people 
believe that their kings are gods, who have deigned to 
take upon them a perishable body for a time; and there 
are countries in which a still more remarkable supersti- 
tion prevails. The royal body even is immortal. The 
king never eats, never sleeps, and never dies. This kind 
of monarch is visible only to his priests. When the 
people wish to present a petition, he gives them audience 
seated behind a curtain, from beneath which he thrusts 
out his foot in token of assent. When he dies, he is 


FAITH 153 


secretly buried by the priests, and a new puppet is 
elected in his stead. 

The savage lives in a strange world, a world of special 
providences and divine interpositions, not happening at 
long intervals and for some great end, but every day 
and almost at every hour. A pain, a dream, a sensation 
of any kind, a stroke of good or bad luck, whatever, in 
short, does not proceed from man, whatever we ascribe, 
for want of a better word, to Chance, is by him ascribed 
to the direct interference of the gods. He knows noth- 
ing about the laws of nature. Death itself is not a 
natural event. Sooner or later men make the gods angry 
and are killed. | 

It is difficult for those who have not lived among 
savages to perfectly realise their faith. When told that 
his gods do not exist, the savage merely laughs in mild 
wonder at such an extraordinary observation being 
made. It seems quite natural to him that his gods should 
be as his parents and grandparents have described: he 
believes as he breathes, without an effort; he feels that 
what he has been taught is true. His creed is in har- 
mony with his intellect, and cannot be changed until his 
intellect is changed. If a god in a dream, or through 
the priests, has made him a promise and the promise 
is broken, he does not on that account doubt the existence 
of the god. He merely supposes that the god has told 
a lie. Nor does it seem strange to him that a god should 
tell a lie. His god is only a gigantic man, a sensual 
despotic king, who orders his subjects to give him the 
first fruits of the fields, the firstlings of the flock, virgins 
for his harem, human bodies for his cannibal repasts. 
As for himself, he is the slave of that god or king: he 
prays, that is to say, he begs; he sings hymns, that is 
to say, he flatters; he sacrifices, that is to say, he pays 
tribute, chiefly out of fear, but partly in the hope of 
getting something better in return—long life, riches, and 
fruitful wives. He is usually afraid to say of the gods 


154 CONDENSATION INTO UNITY 


what he thinks, or even to utter their real name. But 
sometimes he gives vent to the hatred which is burning 
in his heart. Writhing on a bed of sickness, he heaps 
curses on the god who he declares is “eating his inside;” 
and when converted prematurely to a higher creed, his 
god is still to him the invisible but human king. “Oh 
Allah!” a Somali woman was heard to say, “Oh Allah! 
may thy teeth ache like mine! oh Allah! may thy gums 
be sore as mine!’ That Christian monarch, the late 
King Peppel, once exclaimed when he thought of his 
approaching end, that if he could see God_he would kill 
him at once because he made men die. 

The arithmetical arrangement of the gods depends 
entirely upon the intellectual faculties of the people con- 
cerned. In the period of Thing-worship, as it may be 
termed, every brook, tree, hill, and star is itself a living 
creature, benevolent or malignant, asleep or awake. In 
the next stage, every object and phenomenon is inhabited 
or presided over by a genius or spirit; and with some 
nations the virtues and the vices are also endowed with 
personality. As the reasoning powers of men expand, 
their gods diminish in number, and rule over larger areas, 
till finally it is perceived that there is unity in nature, 
that everything which exists is a part of one harmonious 
whole. It is then asserted that one Being manufactured 
the world, and rules over it supreme. But at first the 
Great Being is distant and indifferent; “a god sitting 
outside the universe;” and the old gods become viceroys 
to whom he has deputed the government of the world. 
They are afterwards degraded to the rank of messengers 
or angels, and it is believed that God is everywhere 
present; that he fills the earth and sky; that from him 
directly proceeds both the evil and the good. In some 
systems of belief, however, he is believed to be the Au- 
thor of good alone, and the dominion of evil is assigned 
to a rebellious angel or a rival god. 

So far as we have gone at present, there has been 


RELIGION AND MORALITY 155 


no question of morality. All doctrines relating to the 
creation of the world, the government of man by 
superior beings, and his destiny after death, are con- 
jectures which have been given out as facts, handed 
down with many adornments by tradition, and accepted 
by posterity as “revealed religion.” They are theories 
more or less rational, which uncivilized men have de- 
vised, in order to explain the facts of life, and which 
civilized men believe that they believe. These doctrines 
are not in themselves of any moral value. It is of no 
consequence, morally speaking, whether a man believes 
that the world has been made by one god or by twenty. 
A savage is not of necessity a better man because he be- 
lieves that he lives under the dominion of invisible 
tyrants, who will compel him, some day or other, to 
migrate to another land. 

There is a moral sentiment in the human breast which, 
like intelligence, is born to obscure instincts, and which 
gradually becomes developed. Since the gods of men 
are the reflected images of men, it is evident, that as 
men become developed in morality, the character of 
their gods will also be improved. The king of a savage 
land punishes only offences against himself and his 
dependents. But when that people become more civi- 
lized, the king is regarded as the representative of public 
law. In the same manner the gods of a savage people 
demand nothing from their subjects but taxes and hom- 
age. They punish only heresy, which is equivalent to 
treason: blasphemy, which is equivalent to insult; and 
the withholding of tribute and adoration, which is equiva- 
lent to rebellion. And these are the offences, which even 
amongst civilized nations, the gods are supposed to pun- 
ish most severely. But the civilized gods also require 
that men shall act justly to one another. They are still 
despots, for they order men to flatter them, and to give 
them money. But they are not mere selfish despots: 


156 PRISON AND PALACE 


they will reward those who do good, they will punish 
those who do evil to their fellow-men. 

That vice should be sometimes triumphant, and virtue 
sometimes in distress, creates no difficulty to the savage 
mind. If a good man meets with misfortune, it is sup- 
posed that he is being punished for the sins of an an- 
cestor or a relation. In a certain stage of barbarism, 
society is composed not of individuals, but of families. 
If a murder is committed, the avengers of blood kill the 
first man they meet belonging to the guilty clan. If 
the life cannot be obtained in that generation, the feud 
passes on, for the family never dies. It is considered 
just and proper that children should be punished for 
the sins of their fathers, unto the third and fourth gene- 
ration. 

In a higher state of society, this family system dis- 
appears; individualism becomes established. And as 
soon as this point is reached, the human mind takes 
a vast stride. It is discovered that the moral govern- 
ment of this world is defective, and it is supposed that 
poetical justice will be administered in the next. The 
doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future state 
comes into vogue. The world of ghosts is now divided 
into two compartments. One is the abode of malignant 
spirits, the kingdom of darkness and of pain, to which 
are condemned the blasphemers and the rebels, the mur- 
derers and the thieves. The other is the habitation of 
the gods, the kingdom of joy and light, to which angels 
welcome the obedient and the good. They are dressed 
in white robes, and adorned with golden crowns: they 
dwell eternally in the Royal Presence, gazing upon his 
lustrous countenance, and singing his praises in chorus 
round the throne. 

To the active European mind, such a prospect is not 
by any means inviting; but Heaven was invented in 
the East; and in the East to be a courtier has always 
been regarded as the supreme felicity. The feelings of 


LOYALTY AND PIETY 157 


men towards their god, in the period at which we have 
now arrived, are precisely those of an Eastern subject 
towards his king. The oriental king is the Lord of all 
the land: his subjects are his children and his slaves. 
The man who is doomed to death kisses the fatal firman, 
and submits with reverence to his fate. The man who 
is robbed by the king of all that he has earned, will fold 
his hands and say, “The king gave, and the king taketh 
away. Blessed be the name of the king!” The man 
who lives in a distant province, who knows the king 
only by means of the taxes which are collected in his 
name, will snatch up his arms if he hears that his sacred 
person is in danger, and will defend him as he defends 
his children and his home. He will sacrifice his life for 
one whom he has never seen, and who has never done 
him anything but harm. 

This kind of devotion is called loyalty when exhibited 
towards a king: piety when exhibited towards a god. 
But in either case the sentiment is precisely the same. 
It cannot be too often repeated that god is only a special 
name for king; that religion is a form of government, 
its precepts a code of laws; that priests are gatherers of 
divine taxes, officers of divine police; that men resort to 
churches to fall on their knees and to sing hymns, from 
the same servile propensity which makes the Oriental 
delight in. prostrating himself before the throne; that 
the noble enthusiasm which inspires men to devote them- 
selves to the service of their god, and to suffer death 
rather than deny his name, is identical with the devotion 
of the faithful subject who, to serve his royal master, 
gives up his fortune or his life without the faintest pros- 
pect of reward. The religious sentiment, about which 
so much has been said, has nothing distinctive in itself. 
Love and fear, self-denial and devotion, existed before 
those phantoms were created which men call gods; and 
men have merely applied to invisible kings the senti- 
ments which they had previously felt towards their 


158 CREED CLASSIFICATION 


earthly kings. If they are a people in a savage state, 
they hate both kings and gods within their hearts, and 
obey them only out.of fear. If they are a people in a 
higher state, love is mingled with their fear, producing 
an affectionate awe which, in itself, is pleasing to the 
mind. That the worship of the unseen king should 
survive the worship of the earthly king is natural 
enough; but even that will not endure for ever; the time 
is coming when the crowned idea will be cast aside and 
the despotic shadow disappear. 

By thus translating, or by retranslating, god into king, 
piety into loyalty, and so on: by bearing in mind that 
the gods were not abstract ideas to our ancestors as they 
are to us, but bond-fide men, differing only from men 
on earth in their invisibility and other magic powers; 
by noting that the moral disposition of a god is an image 
of the moral sense of those who worship him—their beau- 
ideal of what a king should be; that the number and 
arrangement of the gods depend exclusively on the in- 
tellectual faculties of the people concerned, on their 
knowledge of nature, and perhaps, to some extent, on 
the political forms of government under which they 
live: above all by remembering that there is a gradual 
development in supernatural ideas, the student of com- 
parative religion will be able to sift and classify with 
ease and clearness dense masses of mythology. But he 
must understand that the various stages overlap. Just 
as sailing vessels and four-horse coaches are still used 
in this age of steam, and as stone implements were still 
to be found in use long after the age of iron had set 
in, so in the early period of god belief, thing-worship 
still to a certain extent endured. In a treaty between 
Hannibal and Philip of Macedonia, which Polybius 
preserved, the contracting parties take oath with one an- 
other “in the presence of Jupiter, Juno, and Apollo: in 
the presence of the Deity of the Carthaginians and of 
Hercules and of Iolaus; in the presence of Mars, Triton, 


IDOLATRY AND DOLLATRY 159 


and Neptune: im the presence of all the gods who are 
with us in the camp; and of the sun, the moon, and the 
earth; the rivers, the lakes, and the waters.” In the 
time of Socrates the Athenians regarded the sun as an 
individual. Alexander, according to Arrian, sacrificed 
not only to the gods of the sea, but “the sea itself was 
honoured with his munificence.”” Even in Job, the purest 
of all monotheistic works, the stars are supposed to be 
live creatures which sing around the heavenly throne. 

Again, in those countries where two distinct classes 
of men exist, the one intellectual and learned; the other 
illiterate and degraded, there will be in reality two re- 
ligions though nominally there may be only one. Among 
the ancient Sabsans the one class adored spirits who 
inhabited the stars, the other class adored the stars 
themselves. Among the worshippers of fire, that element 
to one class was merely an emblem, to the other an 
actual person. Wherever idols or images are used, the 
same phenomenon occurs. These idols are intended by 
the priests as aids to devotion, as books for those who 
cannot read. But the savage believes that his god in- 
habits the image, or even regards the image as itself 
a god. His feelings towards it are those of a child to- 
wards her doll. She knows that it is filled with saw-dust 
and made of painted wood, and yet she loves it as if 
it were alive. Such is precisely the illusion of the savage, 
for he possesses the imagination of a child. He talks 
to his idol fondly and washes its face with oil or rum: 
beats it if it will not give him what he asks; and hides 
it in his waist-cloth if he is going to do something which 
he does not wish it to see. 

There is one other point which it is necessary to ob- 
serve. A god’s moral disposition, his ideas of right and 
wrong, are those of the people by whom he is created. 
Wandering tribes do not, as a rule, consider it wrong to 
rob outside the circle of their clan: their god is therefore a 
robber like themselves. If they settle in a fertile country, 


160 MAN AND CREED 


pass into the agricultural state, build towns, and become 
peaceful citizens with property of their own, they change 
their views respecting theft, and accordingly their god 
forbids it in his laws. But it sometimes happens that 
the sayings and doings of the tent-god are preserved in 
writings which are accepted as revelation by the people 
of a later and a better age. Then may be observed the 
curious and by no means pleasing spectacle of a people 
outgrowing their religion, and believing that their god 
performed actions which would be punished with the 
gallows if they were done by men. 

The mind of an ordinary man is in so imperfect a 
condition that it requires a creed: that is to say, a 
theory concerning the unknown and the unknowable 
in which it may place its deluded faith and be at rest. 
But whatever the creed may be, it should be one 
which is on a level with the intellect, and which i inquiry 
will strengthen, not destroy. 

As for minds of the highest order, they must ever 
remain in suspension of judgment and in doubt. Not 
only do they reject the absurd traditions of the Jews, 
but also the most ingenious attempts which have been 
made to explain, on rational and moral grounds, the 
origin and purpose of the universe. Intense and long- 
continued labour reveals to them this alone : that there 
are regions of thought so subtle and so sublime that 
the human mind is unable therein to expand its wings, 
to exercise its strength. But there is a wide specula- 
tive field in which man is permitted to toil with the 
hope of rich reward, in which observation and experi- 
ence can supply materials to his imagination and his 
reason. In this field two great discoveries have been 
already made. First, that there is a unity of plan in 
nature; that the universe resembles a body in which all 
the limbs and organs are connected with one another : 
and secondly, that all phenomena, physical and moral, 
are subject to laws as invariable as those which regulate 


WHO MADE Gop? 161 


the rising and setting of the sun. It is in reality as 
foolish to pray for rain or a fair wind as it would be 
to pray that the sun should set in the middle of the 
day. It is as foolish to pray for the healing of a disease 
or for daily bread as it is to pray for rain or a fair wind. 
It is as foolish to pray for a pure heart or for mental 
repose as it is to pray for help in sickness or misfortune. 
All the events which occur upon the earth result from 
Law: even those actions which are entirely dependent 
on the caprices of the memory, or the impulse of the 
passions, are shown by statistics to be, when taken in the 
gross, entirely independent of the human will. As a 
single atom, man is an enigma: as a whole, he is a 
mathematical problem. As an individual, he is a free 
agent: as a species, the offspring of necessity. 

The unity of the universe is a scientific fact. To 
assert that it is the operation of a single Mind is a con- 
jecture based upon analogy, and analogy may be a de- 
ceptive guide. It is the most reasonable guess that can 
be made, but still it is no more than a guess ; and it is 
one by which nothing after all is really gained. It tells 
us that the earth rests upon the tortoise : it does not tell 
us on what the tortoise rests. God issued the laws which 
manufactured the universe, and which rule it in his 
growth. But who made God? Theologians declare that 
he made himself; and materialists declare that Matter 
made itself; and both utter barren phrases, idle words. 
The whole subject is beyond the powers of the human 
intellect in its present state. All that we can ascertain 
is this : that we are governed by physical laws which it 
is our duty as scholars of nature to investigate; and by 
moral laws which it is our duty as citizens of nature to 
obey. 

The dogma of a single deity who created the heavens 
and the earth may therefore be regarded as an imper- 
fect method of expressing an undoubted truth. Of all 
religious creeds it is the least objectionable from a 


162 NATURE IN THE NUDE 


scientific point of view. Yet it was not a Greek who 
first discovered or invented the one god, but the wild 
Bedouin of the desert. At first sight this appears a very 
extraordinary fact. How in a matter which depended 
entirely upon the intellect, could these barbarians have 
preceded the Greeks, so far their superiors in every other 
respect? The anomaly, however, can be easily explained. 
In the first theological epoch every object and every 
phenomenon of Nature was supposed to be a creature ; 
in the second epoch, the dwelling or expression of a god. 
It is evident that the more numerous the objects and 
phenomena, the more numerous would be the gods ; the 
more difficult it would be to unravel Nature, to detect 
the connection between phenomena, to discover the unity 
which underlies them all. In Greece there is a remark- 
able variety of climate and contour : hills, groves, and 
streams diversify the scene ; rugged snow-covered peaks 
and warm coast lands, with waving palms, lie side by 
side. But in the land of the Bedouins Nature may be 
seen in the nude. The sky is uncovered; the earth is 
stripped and bare. It is as difficult for the inhabitants 
of such a country to believe that there are many gods, 
as for the people of such a land as Greece to believe that 
there is only one. The earth and the wells and some 
uncouth stones; the sun, the moon, and the stars are 
almost the only materials of superstition that the 
Bedouin can employ; and that they were so employed 
we know. Stone worship and star idolatry, with the 
adoration of ancestral shades, prevailed within Arabia 
in ancient times, and even now are not extinct. ‘The 
servant of the sun” was one of the titles of their ancient 
kings. Certain honours are yet paid to the morning 
star. But in that country the one-god belief was always 
that of the higher class of minds, at least within historic 
time; it is therefore not incorrect to term it the Arabian 
creed. We shall now proceed to show in what manner 
that belief, having mingled with foreign elements, be- 


THE SHEIK ABRAHAM 163 


came a national religion; and how from that religion 
sprang two other religions, which overspread the world. 

Long after the building of the Pyramids, but before 
the dawn of Greek and Roman life, a Bedouin sheik, 
named Abraham, accompanied by his nephew Lot, 
migrated from the plains which lie between the Tigris 
and Euphrates, crossed over the Syro-Arabian desert, 
and entered Canaan, a country about the size of Wales, 
lying below Pheenicia, between the desert and the 
Mediterranean Sea. They found it inhabited by a people 
of farmers and vine-dressers, living in walled cities, and 
subsisting on the produce of the soil. But only a portion 
of the country was under cultivation: they discovered 
wide pastoral regions unoccupied by men, and wandered 
at their pleasure from pasture to pasture, and from 
plain to plain. Their flocks and herds were nourished 
to the full, and multiplied so fast, that the Malthusian 
Law came into force: the herdsmen of Abraham and Lot 
began to struggle for existence; the land could no longer 
bear them both; it was therefore agreed that each should 
select a region for himself. A similar arrangement was 
repeated more than once in the lifetime of the patriarch. 
When his illegitimate sons grew up to man’s estate, he 
gave them cattle, and sent them off in the direction of 
the East. 

At certain seasons of the year he encamped beneath 
the walls of cities, and exchanged the wool of his flocks 
for flour, oil, and wine. He established friendships with 
the native kings, and joined them in their wars. He was 
honoured by them as a prince, for he could bring three 
hundred armed slaves into the field, and his circle of 
tents might fairly be regarded as a town. Before their 
canvas doors sat the women spinning wool, and singing 
the Mesopotamian airs, while the aged patriarch in the 
Great Tent, which served as the forum and the guest- 
house, measured out the rations for the day, gave orders 
to the young men about the stock, and sat in Judgment 


164 ELOAH OR ALLAH 


on the cases which were brought before him, as king 
and father, to decide. 

He bought from the people of the land a field and a 
cave, in which he buried his wife, and in which he was 
afterwards himself interred. He was succeeded by Isaac 
as head of the family. Esau and Jacob, the two sons of 
Isaac, appear to have been equally powerful and rich. 

Up to this time the children of Abraham were 
Bedouin Arabs—nothing more. They worshipped Eloah 
or Allah, sometimes erecting to him a rude altar, on 
which they sacrificed a ram or kid; sometimes a stone 
pillar, on which they poured a drink, and then smeared 
it with oil to his honour and glory; sometimes they 
planted a sacred tree. The life which they led was 
precisely that of the wandering Arabs, who pasture 
their flocks on the outskirts of Palestine at the present 
day. Not only Ishmael, but also Lot, Esau, and various 
other Abrahamites of lesser note became the fathers of 
Arabian tribes. The Beni-Israel did not differ in man- 
ners and religion from the Beni-Ishmael, the Beni-Esau, 
and the Beni-Lot. It was the settlement of the clan in 
a foreign country, the influence of foreign institutions 
which made the Israelites a peculiar people. It was the 
sale of the shepherd boy, at first a house-slave, then a 
prisoner, then a favourite of the Pharaoh, which created a 
destiny for the House of Jacob, separated it from the 
Arab tribes, and educated it into a nationality. When 
Joseph became a great man, he obtained permission to 
send for his father and his brethren. The clan of seventy 
persons with their women and their slaves, came across 
the desert by the route of the Syrian caravan. The old 
Arab, in his coarse woollen gown, and with his staff in 
his hand, was ushered into the royal presence. He gave 
the king his blessing in the solemn manner of the Kast, 
and after a short conversation, was dismissed with a 
splendid gift of land. When Jacob died, his embalmed 
corpse was carried up to Canaan with an Egyptian 


MULTIPLIED EXCEEDINGLY 165 


escort, and buried in the cave which Abraham had 
bought. Joseph had married the daughter of a priest 
of Heliopolis, but his two sons did not become 
Egyptians; they were formally admitted into the family 
by Jacob himself before he died. 

When Joseph also died, the connection between the 
Israelites and the court came to an end. They led the 
life of shepherds in the fertile pasture lands which had 
been bestowed upon them by the king. In course of 
time the twelve families expanded into twelve tribes; 
and the tribe itself became a nation. The government 
at Memphis observed the rapid increase of this people 
with alarm. The Israelites belonged to the same race as 
the hated Hyksos, or shepherd kings. With their long 
beards and flowing robes, they reminded the Egyptians 
of the old oppressors. It was argued that the Bedouins 
might again invade Egypt; and in that case the Israelites 
would take their side. By way of precaution the 
Israelites were treated as prisoners of war, disarmed, 
and employed on the public works. And as they still 
continued to increase, it was ordered that all their male 
children should be killed. It was doubtless the intention 
of the government to marry the girls as they grew up 
to Egyptians, and so to exterminate the race. 

One day the king’s daughter, as she went down with 
her girls to the Nile to bathe, found a Hebrew child ex- 
posed on the waters in obedience to the new decree. She 
adopted the boy, and gave him an Egyptian name. He 
was educated as a priest, and became a member of the 
University of Heliopolis. But although his face was 
shaved and he wore the surplice, Moses remained a 
Hebrew in his heart. He was so overcome by passion 
when he saw an Egyptian ill-using an Israelite, that he 
killed the man upon the spot. The crime became 
known: there was a hue and cry; he escaped to the pen- 
insula of Sinai, and entered the family of an Arab sheik. 

The peninsula of Sinai lies clasped between two arms 


166 SINAI 


of the Red Sea. It is a wilderness of mountains covered 
with a thin, almost transparent, coating of vegetation, 
which serves as pasture to the Bedouin flocks. There 
is one spot only—the oasis of Feiran—where the travel- 
ler can tread on black soft earth, and hear the warbling 
of birds among trees, which stand so thickly together, 
that he is obliged, as he walks, to part the branches 
from his face. The peninsula had not escaped the 
Egyptian arms; tablets may yet be seen on which are 
recorded in paintings and hieroglyphics five thousand 
years old the victories of the Pharaohs over the people 
of the land. They also worked mines of copper in the 
mountains, and heaps of slag still remain. But most 
curious of all are the Sinaitic inscriptions, as they are 
called; figures of animals rudely scrawled on the upright 
surface of the black rocks, and mysterious sentences in 
an undeciphered tongue. 

Among the hills which crown the high plateau, there 
is one which at that time was called the Mount of God. 
It was holy ground to the Egyptians, and also to the 
Arabs, who ascended it as pilgrims, and drew off their 
sandals when they reached the top. Nor is it strange 
that Sinai should have excited reverence and dread; it is 
indeed a weird and awful land. Vast and stern stand 
the mountains, with their five granite peaks pointing to 
the sky; avalanches, like those of the Alps, but of sand, 
not of snow, rush down their naked sides with a clear 
and tinkling sound, resembling convent bells; a peculiar 
property resides in the air; the human voice can be heard 
at a surprising distance, and swells out into a rever- 
berating roar; and sometimes there rises from among the 
hills a dull booming sound like the distant firing of 
heavy guns. 

Let us attempt to realise what Moses must have felt 
when he was driven out of Egypt into such a harsh and 
rugged land. Imagine this man, the adopted son of a 
royal personage, the initiated priest, sometimes turning 


MOSES IN EXILE 167 


the astrolabe towards the sky, perusing the papyrus 
scroll, or watching the crucible and the alembic; some- 
times at the great metropolis enjoying the busy turmoil 
of the streets, the splendid pageants of the court, reclin- 
ing in a carpeted gondola, or staying with a noble at his 
country house. In a moment all is changed. He is alone 
on the mountain side, a shepherd’s crook in his hand. 
He is a man dwelling in a tent; he is married to the 
daughter of a barbarian; his career is at an end. Never 
more will he enter that palace where once he was 
received with honour, where now his name is uttered 
only with contempt. Never more will he discourse with 
grave and learned men in the peaceful college gardens, 
beneath the willows that hang over the Fountain of the 
Sun. Never more will he see the people of his tribe 
whom he loves so dearly, and for whom he endures this 
miserable fate. They will suffer, but he will not see 
them; they will mourn, but he will not hear them—or 
only in his dreams. In his dreams he hears them and 
he sees them, alas! too well. He hears the whistling of 
the lash and the convulsive sobs and groans. He sees 
the poor slaves toiling in the field, their hands brown 
with the clammy clay. He sees the daughters of Israel 
carried off to the harem with struggling arms and 
streaming hair; and then, O lamentable sight! the cham- 
ber of the woman in labour—the seated shuddering, 
writhing form—the mother struggling against maternity 
—the tortured one dreading her release—for the king’s 
officer is standing by the door, and as soon as the male 
child is born its life is at an end. 

The Arabs with whom he was living were also children 
of Abraham, and they related to him legends of the 
ancient days. They told him of the patriarchs who lay 
buried in Canaan with their wives; they told him of 
Eloah whom his fathers had adored. Then as one who 
returns to a long lost home the Egyptian priest returned 
to the simple faith of the desert, to the God of Abraham, 


168 MOSES ON THE MOUNT 


of Isaac, and of Jacob. As he wandered on the moun- 
tain heights he looked to the west and he saw a desert: 
beyond it lay Egypt, the house of captivity, the land 
of bondage. He looked to the east and he saw a desert: 
beyond it lay Canaan, the home of his ancestors, a land 
of peace and soon to be a land of hope. For now new 
ideas rose tumultuously within him. He began to see 
visions and to dream dreams. He heard voices and be- 
held no form; he saw trees which blazed with fire and 
yet were not consumed. He became a prophet; he en- 
tered the ecstatic state. 

Meanwhile the king had died; a new Pharaoh had 
mounted on the throne; Moses was able to return to 
Egypt and to carry out the great design which he had 
formed. He announced to the elders of the people, to 
the heads of houses, and the sheiks of tribes that Eloah 
the God of Abraham had appeared to him in Sinai and 
had revealed his true name—it was Jehovah—and had 
sent him to Egypt to bring away his people, to carry 
them to Canaan. The elders believed in his mission, 
and accepted him as their chief. He went to Pharaoh 
and delivered the message of Jehovah: the king received 
it as he would have received the message of an Arab 
chief: gods were plentiful in Egypt. But whenever a 
public calamity occurred, Moses declared that Jehovah 
was its author: and there were Egyptians who declared 
that their own gods were angry with them for detaining 
a people who were irreligious, filthy in their habits, and 
affected with unpleasant diseases of the skin. The king 
gave them permission to go and offer a sacrifice to their 
desert god. The Israelites stole away, taking with them 
the mummy of Joseph and some jewellery belonging to 
their masters. Guides marched in front bearing a lighted 
apparatus like that which was used in Alexander’s 
camp: which gave a pillar of smoke by day and a flame 
by night. Moses led them vid Suez into Asia, and then 
along the weed-strewn, shell-strewn shore of the Red 


TABERNACLE 169 


Sea to the wilderness of Sinai and the mount of God. 
There with many solemn and imposing rites he delivered 
laws which he said had been issued to him from the 
clouds. He assembled the elders to represent the people, 
and drew up a contract between them and Jehovah. It 
was agreed that they should obey the laws of Jehovah, 
and pay the taxes which he might impose, while he 
engaged on his part to protect them from danger in their 
march through the desert, and to give them possession 
of the Promised Land. An ark or chest of acacia wood 
was made in the Egyptian style; and the agreement was 
deposited therein with the ten fundamental laws which 
Moses had engraved on stone. A tent of dyed skins was 
prepared and fitted with church furniture by. voluntary 
subscription, partly out of stolen goods. This became 
the temple of the people, and the residence of Jehovah, 
who left his own dwelling above the vaulted sky that 
he might be able to protect them on the way. Moses 
appointed his brother Aaron and his sons to serve as 
priests; they wore the surplice, but to distinguish them 
from Egyptian priests they were ordered not to shave 
their heads. The men of Levi, to which tribe Moses 
himself belonged, were set apart for the service of the 
sacred tent. They were in reality his bodyguard, and 
by their means he put down a mutiny at Sinai, 
slaughtering three thousand men. 

When thus the nation had been organised the march 
began. At daybreak two silver trumpets were blown; 
the tents were struck; the tribes assembled under their 
respective banners; and the men who bore the ark went 
first with the guides to show the road, and to choose an 
encampment for the night. The Israelites crossed a stony 
desert, suffering much on the way. Water was scarce; 
they had no provisions, and were forced to subsist on 
manna or angel’s bread, a gummy substance which 
exudes from a desert shrub, and is a pleasant syrup and 
a mild purge, but not a nourishing article of fond, 


170 PROMISED LAND 


As they drew near the land of Canaan the trees of the 
desert, the palm and the acacia, disappeared. But the 
earth became carpeted with green plants, and spotted 
with red anemones, like drops of blood. Here and there 
might be seen a patch of corn, and at last in the distance 
rounded hills with trees standing against the sky. They 
encamped, and a man from each tribe was deputed to 
spy the land. In six weeks they returned bringing with 
them a load of grapes. Two scouts only were in favour 
of invasion. The other ten declared the land was a 
good land, as the fruits showed: a land flowing with milk 
and honey: but the people were like giants: their cities 
were walled and very great; the Israelites were as grass- 
hoppers in comparison, and would not be able to prevail 
against them. 

This opinion was undoubtedly correct. The children 
of Israel were a rabble of field slaves, who had never 
taken a weapon in their hands. The business before 
them was by no means to their taste; and it was not 
what Moses had led them to expect. He had agreed on 
the part of Jehovah to give them a land. They had 
expected to find it unoccupied and prepared for their 
reception like a new house. They did not require a 
prophet to inform them that a country should be theirs 
if they were strong enough to take it by the sword; 
and this it was clear they could not do. So they poured 
forth the vials of their anger and their grief. They 
lifted up their voice and cried; they wept all the night. 
Would to God they had died in the wilderness! Would 
to God they had died in Egypt! Jehovah had brought 
them there that they might fall by the sword, and that 
their wives and little ones might be a prey. They would 
choose another captain; they would go back to Egypt. 
Joshua and Caleb, the two scouts who had recommended 
invasion, tried to cheer them up, and were nearly stoned 
to death for their pains. Next day the people of Canaan 
marched out against them: a skirmish took place, and 


THE RISING GENERATION 171 


the Israelites were defeated. They went back to the 
desert, and wandered forty years in the shepherd or 
Bedouin state. 

And then there was an end of that miserable race who 
were always whining under hardship, hankering after 
the fleshpots of the old slave life. In their stead rose 
up a new generation—genuine children of the desert— 
who could live on a few dates soaked in butter and a 
mouthful of milk a day; who were practised from their 
childhood in predatory wars; to whom rapine was a 
business, and massacre a sport. The conquest of Canaan 
was an idea which they had imbibed at their mother’s 
breasts, and they were now quite ready for the work. 
Moses, before his death, drew up a second agreement 
between Jehovah and the people. It was to the same 
effect as the covenant of Sinai. Loyalty and taxes were 
demanded by Jehovah; long life, success in war, and 
fruitful crops were promised in return. Within this 
contract was included a code of laws which Moses had 
enacted from time to time, in addition to the ten com- 
mandments; and this second agreement was binding not 
only on those who were present, but on their posterity 
as well. 

Moses died; Joshua was made commander-in-chief; 
and the Israelites began their march of war. This time 
they approached the land, not from the south, but from 
the east. 

The river Jordan rises in the Lebanon mountains, half 
way between Tyre and Damascus: it runs due south, 
and ends its curling, twisting course in the dismal 
waters of the Dead Sea. Its basin belongs to the desert, 
for it does not overflow its banks. 

Along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, parallel to 
the valley of the Jordan, lies a fertile strip of land with- 
out good harbours, but otherwise resembling Pheenicia, 
from which it is divided by two large promontories, the 
Tyrian Ladder and the White Cape. 


172 OCCUPATION 


And, thirdly, between the naked valley of the Jordan, 
and this corn producing line of coast, there rises a table- 
land of limestone’ formation, honeycombed with caves, 
watered by running streams of no great size, intersected 
by ravines and also by flat extensive valley plains. 

The coast belonged to the Philistines; the basin of 
the Jordan and the pastoral regions on the south to rov- 
ing Arab tribes; the table-land was inhabited by farmers 
whose towns and villages were always perched on the 
tops of hills, and who cultivated the vine on terraces, 
each vineyard being guarded by a watch tower and a 
wall; the valley plains were inhabited by Canaanites or 
lowlanders, who possessed cavalry and iron chariots of 
war. 

The Israelites differed from other Bedouin tribes in 
one respect; they were not mounted; and they were 
unable to stand their ground against the horsemen of 
the plain. The Philistines, a warlike people, probably 
of the Aryan race, also retained their independence. 
The conquests of the Israelites were confined to the 
land of the south, the Jordan valley and the mountain 
regions; though even in the Highlands the conquest 
under Joshua was not complete. However, the greater 
part of Palestine was taken, and partitioned among the 
Israelitish tribes. Some of these inclined to the pastoral, 
and others to the agricultural condition; and each was 
governed by its own sheik. During four hundred years 
Ephraim remained the dominant tribe, and with 
Ephraim the high priest took up his abode. At a place 
called Shiloh there was erected an enclosure of low stone 
walls, over which the sacred tent was drawn. This was 
the oracle establishment, or House of God, to which all 
the tribes resorted three times a year to celebrate the 
holy feasts with prayer and sacrifice, and psalmody, and 
the sacred dance. 

The Levites had no political power, and no share in 
civil life; but they had cities of their own, and they 


THE DELPHI OF THE HEBREWS 173 


also travelled about like mendicant friars from place to 
place performing certain functions of religion, and sup- 
ported by the alms of the devout. 

It was owing to these two institutions, the oracle and 
the monkish order, that the nationality of Israel was 
preserved. Yet though it escaped extinction it did not 
retain its unity and strength. So far from extending 
their conquests, after their first inroad under Joshua, 
the Israelites constantly lost ground. They were 
divided into twelve petty states, always jealous of one 
another, and often engaged in civil war. The natives 
took advantage of these dissensions, and subdued them 
one by one. Now and then a hero would arise, rouse 
them to a war of independence, and rule over them as 
judge for a few years. Then again they would fall 
apart, and again be conquered, sometimes paying 
tribute as vassals, sometimes hiding in the mountain 
caves. However, at last there came a change. The 
temporal and spiritual powers, united in the hands of 
Moses, were divided at his death. Joshua became the 
general of Jehovah; the high priest became his grand 
vizier, Joshua could do nothing of importance without 
consulting the high priest, who read the commands of 
the Divine Sheik in the light and play of Urim and 
Thummim, the oracular shining stones. On the other 
hand, the high priest could not issue laws; he could only 
give decisions and replies. But now a Nazarite or ser- 
vant of the church, named Samuel, usurped the office, 
or at all events the powers, of high priest which be- 
longed to the family of Aaron, and also obtained the 
dignity of President or Judge. He professed to be the 
recipient of private instructions from Jehovah, and 
issued laws in his name, and went round on circuit 
judging the twelve tribes. 

In his old age he delegated this office to his sons, 
who gave false judgments and took bribes. The elders 


174 POPE SAMUEL 


of the people came to Samuel, and asked him to appoint 
them a King. 

Samuel had established a Papacy, intending to make 
it hereditary in his house: and now the evil conduct of 
his sons frustrated all his hopes. He protested in the 
name of Jehovah against this change in the constitu- 
tion; he appealed to his own blameless life; he drew a 
vivid picture of the horrors of despotism ; but in vain. 
The people persisted in their demand; they were at that 
time in the vassal state; and their liege lords, the Philis- 
tines, did not permit them to have smiths lest they 
should make weapons and rebel. Samuel himself had 
united the tribes, and had inspired them with the senti- 
ments of nationality. They yearned to be free; and 
they observed that they lost battles because their 
enemies were better officered than themselves. They saw 
that they needed a military chief who would himself 
lead them to the charge, instead of sacrificing a sucking 
lamb, or kneeling on a neighbouring hill with his hands 
up in the air. 

Samuel still protesting elected Saul to the royal office. 
The young man was gladly accepted by the people on 
account of his personal beauty, and as he belonged to 
the poorest family of the poorest tribe in Israel, Samuel 
hoped that he would be able to preserve the real power 
in his own hands. But it so happened that Saul was 
not only a brave soldier and a good general, he was also 
at times a “god-intoxicated man,” and did not require 
a third person to bring him the instructions of Jehovah. 
He made himself the Head of the Church, as well as of 
the State, and Samuel was compelled to retire into pri- 
vate life. It is for this reason that Saul’s character has 
been so bitterly attacked by the priest-historians of the 
Jews. For what, after all, are the crimes of which he 
was guilty? He administered the battle-offering him- 
self, and he spared the life of a man whom Samuel had 
commanded him to kill as a human sacrifice to Jeho- 


A GOD-INTOXICATED MAN 175 


vah. Saul was by no means faultless, but his character 
was pure as snow when compared with that of his suc- 
cessor. David was undoubtedly the greater general 
of the two, yet it was Saul who laid the foundations of 
the Jewish kingdom. It was Saul who conquered the 
Philistines and won freedom for the nation with no 
better weapons than their mattocks, and their axes, and 
their sharpened goads. Saul’s persecution of David is 
the worst stain upon his life; yet, if it is true that David 
had been in Saul’s lifetime privately anointed king, he 
was guilty of treason, and deserved to die. But that 
story of the anointing might have been invented after- 
wards to justify his succession to the throne. 

At first David took refuge with the Philistines and 
fought against his own countrymen. Next he turned 
brigand, and was joined by all the criminals and out- 
laws of the land. The cave of Adullam was his lair, 
whence he sallied forth to levy blackmail on the rich 
farmers and graziers of the neighbourhood, cutting 
their throats when they refused to pay. At the same 
time, he was a very religious man, and never went on 
a plundering expedition without consulting a little 
image, which revealed to him the orders and wishes of 
Jehovah, just as the Bedouins always pray to Allah be- 
fore they commit a crime, and thank him for his assist- 
ance when it has been successfully performed. 

Saul was succeeded by his son Ishbosheth, who was 
accepted by eleven tribes. But David, supported by 
his own tribe, and by his band of well-trained robbers, 
defied the nation, and made war upon his lawful king. 
He had not the shadow of a claim; however, with the 
help of treason and assassination he finally obtained 
the crown. His military genius had then full scope. 
He took Jerusalem, a pagan stronghold which, during 
four hundred years, had maintained its independence. 
He conquered the coast of the Philistines, the plains 
of Canaan, the great city of Damascus, and the tribes 


176 ORIENTAL WISDOM 


of the desert far and near. He garrisoned Arabia 
Petrea. He ruled from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. 

This man after God’s own heart had a well-stocked 
harem, and the usual intrigues took place. He disin- 
herited his eldest son, and left the kingdom to the son 
of his favourite wife; a woman for whom he had com- 
mitted a crime which had offended the not over-delicate 
Jehovah. The nation seemed taken by surprise, and 
Solomon, in order to preserve the undivided affections 
of his people, at once killed his brother and his party, a 
coronation ceremony not uncommon in the East. 

The wisdom of Solomon has become proverbial. But 
whatever his intellectual attainments may have been, he 
did not possess that kind of wisdom which alone is 
worthy of a king. He did not attempt to make his 
monarchy enduring, his people prosperous and content. 
He was a true oriental Sultan, sleek and sensual, luxuri- 
ous and magnificent, short-sighted and unscrupulous, 
cutting down the tree to eat the fruit. The capital of a 
despot is always favoured, and with the citizens of 
Jerusalem, he was popular enough. They were, in a 
measure, his guests and companions, the inmates of his 
house. They saw their city encircled with enormous 
walls, and paved with slabs of black and shining stone. 
Their eyes were dazzled, and their vanity delighted with 
the splendid buildings which he raised; the ivory palace, 
the cedar palace, and the temple. The pilgrims who 
thronged to the sanctuary from all quarters of the land, 
and the travellers who came for the purposes of trade 
brought wealth into the city. Foreign commerce was a 
court monopoly; but the city was a part of the court. 
Outside the city walls, however, or at least beyond the 
circle of the city lands, it was a very different affair. 
The rural districts were severely taxed; especially those 
at a distance from the capital. The tribes of Israel, 
which, but a few years before, had been on terms of 
complete equality among themselves, were now trampled 


A CHANGE OF MASTERS 177 


under foot by this upstart of the House of Judah. The 
tribe of Ephraim which had so long enjoyed supremacy, 
became restless beneath the yoke. While Solomon yet 
reigned, the standard of revolt was raised; as soon as 
he died, this empire of a day dissolved. Damascus 
became again an independent state. The Arabs cut. 
the road to the Red Sea. The King of Egypt, who had 
probably been Solomon’s liege lord, despatched an army 
to fetch away the treasures of the temple and the palace. 
The ten tribes seceded, and two distinct kingdoms were 
established. 

The ten tribes of Israel, or the kingdom of the North 
extended over the lands of Samaria and Galilee. Its. 
capital was Sechem; its sanctuary, Mount Gerizim. 

Judah and Benjamin, the royal tribes, occupied the 
highlands of Judea. Jerusalem was their capital; its 
temple was their sanctuary, and the Levites, whom the 
Israelites had discarded, were their priests. It is need- 
less to relate the wars which were almost incessantly 
being waged between these two miserable kingdoms. 
When the Empire of the Tigris took the place of Egypt 
as suzerain of Syria, both Israel and Judah sent their 
tribute to Nineveh; and as the cuneiform history relates, 
both of them afterwards rebelled. Sennacherib marched 
against them, and carried off the ten tribes into cap- 
tivity. Judzea was more mountainous, and on that ac- 
count more difficult to conquer than the land of the 
North. The Jews, as they may now be called, defended 
themselves stoutly; and a camp plague broke up the 
army before Jerusalem. By this occurrence, Egypt also 
was preserved from conquest. At that time, Sethos, the 
priest, was king; and the soldiers, whose lands he had 
taken, refused to fight. Both the Egyptians and the 
Jews ascribed their escape to a miracle performed by 
their respective gods. 

Great events now took place. The Assyrian Empire 
fell to pieces, and Nineveh was destroyed. The Medes 


178 BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 


inherited its power on the east of the Euphrates ; the 
Chaldzans inherited its power on the west. Egypt un- 
der the Phil-Hellenes was again spreading into Asia, and 
a terrific duel took place between the two powers. The 
Jews managed so well, that when the Egyptian star was 
in the ascendant they took the side of Babylon; and 
when the Babylonians had won the battle of Carchemish, 
the Jews intrigued with the fallen nation. Nebuchad- 
nezzar gave them repeated warnings; but at last his 
patience was exhausted, and he levelled the rebellious: 
city to the ground. Some of the citizens escaped to 
Egypt; the aristocracy and priesthood were carried off 
to Babylon; the peasants alone were left to cultivate 
the soil. 

At Babylon there was a collection of captive kings, 

each of whom was assigned his daily allowance and his 
throne. In this palace of shadows the unfortunate 
Jehoiachin ended his days. But the Jewish people were 
not treated as captives or as slaves, and they soon began 
to thrive. 
_ When the ten tribes seceded they virtually aban- 
doned their religion. They withdrew from the temple, 
which they had once acknowledged as the dwelling of 
Jehovah; they had no hereditary priesthood; they had 
no holy books; and so as soon as they ceased to possess 
a country they ceased to exist as a race. But the Jews 
preserved their nationality intact. 

Moses had been an Egyptian priest, and the unity of 
God was a fundamental article of that religion. The 
unity of God was also the tenet of the more intelligent 
Arabs of the desert. Whether therefore we regard that 
great man as an Egyptian or as an Arab it can scarcely 
be doubted that the views which he held of the Deity 
were as truly unitarian as those of Mahomet and Abd- 
ul-Wahhab. It is, however, quite certain that to the. 
people whom he led, Jehovah was merely an invisible 
Bedouin chief who travelled with them in a tent, who 


~ 


THE CHARACTER OF JEHOVAH 179 


walked about the camp at night, and wanted it kept 
clean, who manceuvred the troops in battle, who 
delighted in massacres and human sacrifice, who mur- 
dered people in sudden fits of rage, who changed his 
mind, who enjoined petty larceny and employed angels 
to tell lies, who, in short, possessed all the vices of the 
Arab character. He also possessed their ideal virtues, 
for he prohibited immorality, and commanded them to 
be hospitable to the stranger, to be charitable to the 
poor, to treat with kindness the domestic beast and the 
captive wife. 

It was impossible for Moses to raise their minds to a 
nobler conception of the Deity; it would have been as 
easy to make them see Roman noses when they looked 
into a mirror. He therefore made use of their super- 
stition in order to rule them for their own good, and 
descended to trumpetings and fire-tricks, which cham- 
ber moralists may condemn with virtuous indignation, 
but which those who have known what it is to com- 
mand a savage mob will not be inclined to criticise 
severely. 

When the settlement in Canaan took place the course 
of events gave rise to a theory about Jehovah, which 
not only the Israelites held, but also the Philistines. It 
was believed that he was a mountain god, and could 
not fight on level ground. He was unlike the pagan 
gods in one respect, namely, that he ordered his people 
to destroy the groves and idols of his rivals, and threat- 
ened to punish them if they worshipped any god but him. 
However, as might be supposed, although the Israelites 
were very loyal on the mountains they worshipped other 
gods when they fought upon the plains. Whenever they 
won a battle they sang a song in honour of Jehovah, 
and declared that he was ‘‘a man of war”; but when they 
lost a battle they supposed that Baal or Dagon had 
trodden Jehovah under foot. The result of this was a 
mixed religion: they worshipped Jehovah: but they 


180 THE CHARACTER IMPROVES 


worshipped other gods as well. Solomon declared when 
he opened the temple that Jehovah filled the sky, that 
there were no other gods but he. But this was merely 
Oriental flattery. Solomon must have believed that 
there were other gods, because he worshipped other gods. 
His temple was in fact a Pantheon; and altars were 
raised on the mount of Olives to Moloch and Astarte. 
After the reign of Solomon, however, the Jews became a 
civilized people: a literary class arose. Jerusalem, 
situated on the highway between the Euphrates and the 
Nile, obtained a place in the Asiatic world. The minds 
of the citizens became elevated and refined, and that re- 
flection of their minds which they called Jehovah 
assumed a pure and noble form: he was recognised as 
the one God, the Creator of the world. 

During all these years Moses had been forgotten; 
but now his code of laws (so runs the legend) was dis- 
covered in a corner of the temple; and laws of a higher 
kind adapted to a civilized people were issued under 
his name. The idols were broken, the foreign priests 
were expelled. It was in the midst of this great religious 
revival that Jerusalem was destroyed; and it may well 
be that the law which forbade the Jews to render 
homage to a foreign king was the chief cause of their 
contumacy and their dispersal. It was certainly the 
cause of all their subsequent calamities: it was their 
loyalty to Jehovah which provoked the destruction of 
the city by the Romans: it was their fidelity to the law 
which brought down upon them all the curses of the 
law. 

The reformation in the first period had been by no 
means complete: there had been many relapses and 
backslidings, and they therefore readily believed that 
the captivity was a judgment upon them for their 
sins. By the waters of Babylon they repented with bit- 
ter tears; in a strange land they returned to the god of 
their fathers, and never deserted him again. Henceforth 


RESTORATION 181 


religion was their patriotism. Education became gen- 
eral: divine worship was organised: schools and syna- 
gogues were established wherever Jews were to be found. 

And soon they were to be found in all the cities of the 
Eastern world. They had no land, and therefore adopted 
commerce as their pursuit; they became a trading and 
a travelling people; and the financial abilities which 
they displayed obtained them employment in the house- 
holds and treasuries of kings. 

The dispersion of the Jews must be dated from this 
period, and not from the second destruction of the city. 
When Cyrus conquered Babylon he restored to the Jews 
their golden candlesticks and holy vessels, and allowed 
them to return home, and rendered them assistance 
partly from religious sympathy, for the Jews made him 
believe that his coming had been predicted by their 
prophets, and partly from motives of policy. Palestine 
was the key to Egypt, against which Cyrus had designs; 
and it was wise to plant in Palestine a people on whom 
he could rely. But not all the Jews availed themselves 
of his decree. The merchants and officials who were 
now making their fortunes by the waters of Babylon 
were not inclined to return to the modest farmer life of 
Judea. Their piety was warm and sincere; but it was 
no longer combined with a passion for the soil. They 
began to regard Jerusalem as the Mahometans regard 
Mecca. The people who did return were chiefly the 
fanatics, the clergy and the paupers. The harvest, as we 
shall find, was worthy of the seed. 

Beneath the Persian yoke the Jews of Juda were 
content, and paid their tribute with fidelity. They 
could do so without scruple, for they identified Ormuzd 
with Jehovah, took lessons in theology from the doctors 
of the Zendavesta, and recognised the great King as 
God’s Viceroy on earth. But when the Persian empire 
was broken up, Palestine was again tossed upon the 
waves. The Greek Kings of Alexandria and Antioch 


182 THE GREEK DYNASTY 


repeated the wars of Nebuchadnezzar and Necho. Again 
Egypt was worsted, and Syria became a province of 
the Greco-Asiatic empire. The government encouraged 
emigration into the newly conquered lands, and soon 
Palestine was covered with Greek towns and filled with 
Greek settlers. Judsea alone remained like an island 
in the flood: European culture was detested by the doc- 
tors of the law, who inflicted the same penalty for learn- 
ing Greek as for eating pork. They therefore resisted 
the spread of civilisation; and Jerusalem was closed 
against the Greeks. 

In the Hellenic world toleration was the universal 
rule. An oracle at Delphi had expressed the opinion 
of all when it declared that the proper religion for each 
man was the religion of his fatherland. Governments, 
therefore, did not interfere with the religious opinions 
of the people; but on the other hand the religious 
opinions of the people did not interfere with their civil 
duties. We allow the inhabitants of the holy city of 
Benares to celebrate the rites of their pilgrimage in their 
own manner, and to torture themselves in moderation, 
but we should at once commence what they would call 
a, religious persecution if they were to purify the town 
by destroying the shops of the beef-butchers and other 
institutions, which are an abomination in their eyes. 
Antiochus Epiphanes was by nature a humane and 
enlightened prince; he attempted to Huropeanize 
Jerusalem; he could do this only by abolishing the 
Jewish laws; he could abolish their laws only by destroy- 
ing their religion; and thus he was gradually drawn into 
barbarous and useless crimes of which he afterwards 
repented, but which have gained him the reputation of 
a Nero. 

At first, however, it appeared as if he would succeed. 
The aristocratic party of Jerusalem were won over to 
the cause. A gymnasium was erected, and Jews, with 
artificial foreskins, appeared naked in the arena. Riots 


THE MACCABEES 183 


broke out. Then royal edicts were issued forbidding 
circumcision, the keeping of the Sabbath, and the use 
of the law. A pagan altar was set up in the Holy of 
Holies, and swine were sacrificed upon it to the 
Olympian Jove. The riots increased. Then a Greek 
regiment garrisoned the city; all new born children that 
were found to be circumcised were hurled with their 
mothers from the walls; altar pork was offered as a test 
of loyalty to the elders of the church; and those who 
refused to eat were put to death with tortures too hor- 
rible to be described. And now the Jews no longer 
raised riots: they rebelled. The empire was at that 
time in a state of weakness and disorder; and under 
the gallant Maccabees the independence of Judea was 
achieved. Yet it is only in adversity that the Jews can 
be admired. As soon as they obtained the power of self- 
government they showed themselves unworthy to 
possess it, and in the midst of a civil war they were 
enveloped by the Roman power, which had extended 
them its protection in the period of the Maccabees. The 
senate placed Herod the Great, an Arab prince, upon the 
throne. 

Herod was a man of the world, and his policy re- 
sembled that of the Ptolemies in Egypt. He built the 
temple at Jerusalem, and a theatre at Cesarea, in which 
city he preferred to dwell. The kingdom at his death 
was divided between his three sons: they were merely 
Rajahs under the rule of Rome, and the one who gov- 
erned Judea having been removed for misbehaviour, 
that country was attached to the pro-consulate of Syria. 
A lieutenant-governor was appointed to reside in the 
turbulent district to collect the revenues and maintain 
order. The position of the first commandant whom 
Russia sends to garrison Bokhara will resemble that 
of the procurator who took up his winter quarters at 
Jerusalem. 

Those Jews of Judea, those Hebrews of the Hebrews, 


184 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE 


regarded all the Gentiles as enemies of God: they con- 
sidered it a sin to live abroad, or to speak a foreign 
language, or to rub their limbs with foreign oil. Of all 
the trees, the Lord had chosen but one vine; and of all 
the flowers, but one lily; and of all the birds, but one 
dove; and of all the cattle, but one lamb; and of all 
builded cities, only Sion; and among all the multitude 
of people, he had elected the Jews as a peculiar treasure, 
and had made them a nation of priests and holy men. 
For their sake God had made the world. On their ac- 
count alone empires rose and fell. Babylon had 
triumphed because God was angry with his people; 
Babylon had fallen, because he had forgiven them. It 
may be imagined that it was not easy to govern such a 
race. They acknowledged no King but Jehovah, no laws 
but the precepts of their holy books. In paying tribute, 
they yielded to absolute necessity: but the taxgatherers 
were looked upon as unclean creatures: no respectable 
men would eat with them or pray with them; their 
evidence was not accepted in the courts of justice. 
Their own government consisted of a Sanhedrim or 
Council of Elders, presided over by the High Priest. 
They had power to administer their own laws, but could 
not inflict the punishment of death without the permis- 
sion of the Procurator. All persons of consideration 
devoted themselves to the study of the Law. Hebrew 
had become a dead language, and some learning was 
therefore requisite for the exercise of this profession, 
which was not the prerogative of a single class. It was 
a Rabbinical axiom that the crown of the kingdom was 
deposited in Judah, and the crown of the priesthood in the 
seed of Aaron, but that the crown of the law was com- 
mon to all Israel. Those who gained distinction as ex- 
pounders of the sacred books were saluted with the title 
of Rabbi, and were called scribes and doctors of the 
law. The people were ruled by the scribes, but the 
scribes were recruited from the people. It was not an 


SADDUCEES 185 


idle caste—an established Church—but an order which 
was filled and refilled with the pious, the earnest, and 
ambitious members of the nation. 

There were two great religious sects which were also 
political parties, as must always be the case where law 
and religion are combined. The Sadducees were the 
rich, the indolent, and the passive aristocrats; they were 
the descendants of those who had belonged to the Greek 
party in the reign of Antiochus; and it was said that 
they themselves were tainted with the Greek philosophy. 
They professed, however, to belong to the conservative 
Scripture and original Mosaic school. As the Protes- 
tants reject the traditions of the ancient Church, some 
of which have doubtless descended v1vd voce from the 
apostolic times; so all traditions, good and bad, were 
rejected by the Sadducees. As Protestants always in- 
quire respecting a custom or doctrine, “Is it in the 
Bible?” so the Sadducees would accept nothing that 
could not be shown them in the law. They did not be- 
lieve in heaven and hell, because there was nothing 
about heaven and hell in the books of Moses. The 
morality which their doctors preached was cold and 
pure, and adapted only for enlightened minds. They 
taught that men should be virtuous without the fear of 
punishment, and without the hope of reward: and that 
such virtue alone is of any worth. 

The Pharisees were mostly persons of low birth. They 
were the prominent representatives of the popular be- 
lief: zealots in patriotism, as well as in religion: the 
teaching, the preaching, and the proselytising party. 
Among them were to be found two kinds of men. Those 
Puritans of the Commonwealth with lank hair, and sour 
visage, and upturned eyes, who wore sombre garments, 
and sniffled through their noses, and garnished their dis- 
course with Scripture texts, were an exact reproduction, 
so far as the difference of place and period would allow, 
of certain Jerusalem Pharisees who veiled their faces 


186 PHARISEES 


when they went abroad lest they should behold a woman 
or some unclean thing; who strained the water which 
they drank for fear they should swallow the forbidden 
gnat; who gave alms to the sound of trumpet, and 
uttered long prayers in a loud voice; who wore texts 
embroidered on their robes and bound upon their brows; 
who followed minutely the observances of the cere- 
monial law; who added to it with their traditions; who 
lengthened the hours and deepened the gloom of the 
Sabbath day, and increased the taxes which it had been 
ordered to pay upon the altar. 

On the other hand, there had been among the Puritans 
many men of pure and gentle lives; and a similar class 
existed among the Pharisees. The good Pharisee, says 
the Talmud, is he who obeys the law because he loves 
the Lord. They addressed their God by the name of 
“Father” when they prayed. “Do unto others as you 
would be done by,” was an adage often on their lips. 
That is the law, they said, all the rest 1s mere commen- 
tary. To the Pharisees belonged all that was best and 
all that was worst in the Hebrew religious life. 

The traditions of the Pharisees related partly to cere- 
monial matters which in the written law were already 
diffuse and intricate enough. But it must also be 
remembered that without traditions the Hebrew 
theology was barbarous and incomplete. Before the 
captivity the doctrine of rewards and punishments in a 
future state had not been known. The scheol of the 
Jews was a land of shades, in which there was neither 
joy nor sorrow, in which all ghosts or souls dwelt pro- 
miscuously together. When the Jews came in contact 
with the Persian priests they were made acquainted 
with the heaven and hell of the Avesta. It is probable 
indeed, that witnout foreign assistance they would in 
time have developed a similar doctrine for themselves. 
Already, in the Psalms and Book of Job, are signs that 
the Hebrew mind was in a transition state. When 


ORIGIN OF THE DEVIL 187 


Ezekiel declared that the son should not be responsible 
for the iniquity of the father, nor the father for the 
iniquity of the son; that the righteousness of the 
righteous should be upon him, and that the wickedness 
of the wicked should be upon him, he was preparing the 
way for a new system of ideas in regard to retribution. 
But as it was, the Jews were indebted to the Avesta for 
their traditional theory of a future life; and they also 
adopted the Persian ideas of the resurrection of the 
body, the rivalry of the Evil spirit, and the approaching 
destruction and renovation of the world. 

The Satan of Job is not a rebellious angel, still less 
a contending god: he is merely a mischievous and ma- 
lignant sprite. But the Satan of the restored Jews was 
a powerful Prince who went about like a roaring lion, 
and to whom this world belonged. He was copied from 
Ahriman, the God of Darkness, who was ever contending 
with Ormuzd, the God of Light. The Persians believed 
that Ormuzd would finally triumph, and that a prophet 
would be sent to announce the gospel or good tidings of 
his approaching victory. Terrible calamities would then 
take place: the stars would fall down from heaven: the 
earth itself would be destroyed. After which it would 
come forth new from the hands of the Creator: a kind 
of Millennium would be established: there would be 
one law, one language, one government for men, and 
universal peace would reign. 

This theory became blended in the Jewish minds with 
certain expectations of their own. In the days of cap- 
tivity their prophets had predicted that a Messiah or 
anointed King would be sent, that the kingdom of David 
would be restored, and that Jerusalem would become 
the head-quarters of God on earth. All the nations 
would come to Jerusalem to keep the feast of tabernacles 
and to worship God. Those who did not come should 
have no rain; and as the Egyptians could do without 
rain, if they did not come they should have the plague. 


188 A MONOPOLISED DEITY 


The Jewish people would become one vast priesthood; 
and all nations would pay them tithe. Their seed would 
inherit the Gentiles. They would suck the milk of the 
Gentiles. They would eat the riches of the Gentiles. 
These same unfortunate Gentiles would be their plough- 
men and their vinedressers. Bowing down would come 
those that afflicted Jerusalem, and would lick the dust 
off her feet. Strangers would build up her walls, and 
kings would minister unto her. Many people and strong 
nations would come to see the Lord of Hosts in Jerusa- 
lem. Ten men in that day would lay hold of the skirt of 
a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have heard 
that God is with you. It was an idea worthy of the 
Jews that they should keep the Creator to themselves in 
Jerusalem, and make their fortunes out of the monopoly. 

In the meantime these prophecies had not been ful- 
filled; and the Jews were in daily expectation of the 
Messiah, as they are still, and as they are likely to be 
for some time to come. It was the belief of the vulgar 
that this Messiah would be a man belonging to the family 
of David, who would liberate them from the Romans, and 
become their King; so they were always on the watch, 
and whenever a remarkable man appeared they con- 
cluded that he was the son of David, the Holy One of 
Israel, and were ready at once to proclaim him king, 
and to burst into rebellion. This illusion gave rise to 
repeated riots or revolts, and at last brought about the 
destruction of the city. 

But among the higher class of minds the expectation 
of the Messiah, though not less ardent, was of a more 
spiritual kind. They believed that the Messiah was 
that prophet often called the Son of Man, who would 
be sent by God to proclaim the defeat of Satan, and the 
renovation of the world. They interpreted the prophets 
after a manner of their own: the kingdom foretold was 
the kingdom of heaven, and the new Jerusalem was not 
a Jerusalem on earth, but a celestial city built of 


THE MESSIAH THEORY 189 


precious stones and watered by the Stream of Life. 

Such were the hopes of the Jews. The whole nation 
trembled with excitement and suspense; the mob of 
Judea awaiting the Messiah or king who should lead 
them to the conquest of the world; the more noble- 
minded Jews of Palestine, and especially the foreign 
Jews, awaiting the Messiah or Son of Man, who should 
proclaim the approach of the most terrible of all events. 
There were many pious men and women who withdrew 
entirely from the cares of ordinary life, and passed their 
days in watching and in prayer. 

The Neo-Jewish or Persian-Hebrew religion, with its 
sublime theory of a single god, with its clearly defined 
doctrine of rewards and punishments, with its one grand 
duty of faith or allegiance to a divine king, was so at- 
tractive to the mind on account of its simplicity that it 
could not fail to conquer the discordant and jarring 
creeds of the Pagan world, as soon as it should be propa- 
gated in the right manner. There is a kind of Natural 
Selection in religion; the creed which is best adapted to 
the mental world will invariably prevail; and the men- 
tal world is being gradually prepared for the reception 
of higher and higher forms of religious life. At this 
period Europe was ready for the reception of the one- 
god species of belief, but it existed only in the Jewish 
area, and was there confined by artificial checks. The 
Jews held the doctrine that none but Jews could be 
saved; and most of them looked forward to the eternal 
torture of Greek and Roman souls with equanimity, if 
not with satisfaction. They were not in the least 
desirous to redeem them; they hoarded up their religion 
as they did their money; and considered it a heritage, a 
patrimony, a kind of entailed estate. There were some 
Jews in foreign parts who esteemed it a work of piety to 
bring the Gentiles to a knowledge of the true God; and as 
it was one of the popular amusements of the Romans to 
attend the service at the Synagogue a convert was occa- 


190 JEWS AND GENTILES 


sionally made. But such cases were very rare; for in 
order to embrace the Jewish religion it was necessary to 
undergo a dangerous operation, to abstain from eating 
with the pagans, in short to become a Jew. It was 
therefore indispensable for the success of the Hebrew 
religion that it should be divested of its local customs. 
But however much the Pharisees and Sadducees might 
differ on matters of tradition, they were perfectly agreed 
on this point, that the ceremonial laws were necessary 
for salvation. These laws could never be given up by 
Jews unless they first became heretics; and this was 
what eventually occurred. A schism arose among the 
Jews; the sectarians were defeated and expelled. Foiled 
in their first object they cast aside the law of Moses, 
and offered the Hebrew religion without the Hebrew 
ceremonies to the Greek and Roman world. We shall 
now sketch the character of the man who prepared the 
way for this remarkable event. 

It was a custom in Israel for the members of each 
family to meet together once a year that they might 
celebrate a sacred feast. A lamb roasted whole was 
placed upon the table, and a cup of wine was filled. 
Then the eldest son said, “Father, what is the meaning 
of this feast?’’ And the father replied that it was held 
in memory of the sufferings of their ancestors, and of 
the mercy of the Lord their God. For while they were 
weeping and bleeding in the land of Egypt there came 
his voice unto Moses and said that each father of a 
family should select a lamb without blemish from his 
flock, and should kill it on the tenth day of the month 
Akib, at the time of the setting of the sun; and should 
put the blood in a basin, and should take a sprig of 
hyssop and sprinkle the door-posts and lintel with the 
blood; and should then roast the lamb and eat it with 
unleavened bread and bitter herbs: they should eat it as 
if in haste, each one standing, with his loins girt, his 
sandals on his feet, and his staff in his hand. That night 


THE PASSOVER 191 


the angel of the Lord slew the first born of the 
Egyptians; and that night Israel was delivered from her 
bonds. 

When the father had thus spoken, the lamb was eaten, 
and four cups of wine were drunk, and the family sang 
a hymn. At this beautiful and solemn festival all per- 
sons of the same kin endeavoured to meet together; and 
Hebrew pilgrims from all parts of the world journeyed 
to Jerusalem. When they came within sight of the 
Holy City and saw the temple shining in the distance 
like a mountain of snow, some clamoured with cries of 
joy, some uttered low and painful sobs. Drawing closer 
together, they advanced towards the gates singing the 
Psalms of David and offering up prayers for the restora- 
tion of Israel. 

At this time the subscriptions from the various 
churches abroad were brought to Jerusalem, and were 
carried to the Temple treasury in solemn state; and 
at this time, also, the citizens of Jerusalem witnessed 
a procession which they did not like so well. A com- 
pany of Roman soldiers escorted the lieutenant- 
governor, who came up from Cesarea for the festival, 
that he might give out the vestments of the High Priest, 
which, being the insignia of government, the Romans 
kept under lock and key. 

It was the nineteenth year of the reign of Tiberius 
Cesar; Pontius Pilate had taken up his quarters in the 
city, and the time of the Passover was at hand. Not 
only Jerusalem, but also the neighbouring villages, were 
filled with pilgrims, and many were obliged to encamp 
in tents outside the walls. 

It happened one day that a sound of shouting was 
heard; the men ran up to the roofs of their houses, and 
the maidens peeped through their latticed windows. A 
young man mounted on a donkey was riding towards 
the city. A crowd streamed out to meet him, and a 
crowd followed him behind. The people cast their 


192 JESUS ENTERING JERUSALEM 


mantles on the road before him, and also covered it with 
green boughs. He rode through the city gates straight 
to the temple, dismounted and entered the holy building. 

In the outer courts there was a kind of bazaar in 
connection with the temple worship. Pure white lambs, 
pigeons, and other animals of the requisite age and ap- 
pearance, were there sold; and money merchants, sitting 
at their tables, changed the foreign coin with which the 
pilgrims were provided. The young man at once pro- 
ceeded to upset the tables and to drive their astonished 
owners from the temple, while the crowd shouted, and 
the little gamins, who were not the least active in the 
riot cried out, “Hurrah for the son of David!” Then 
people suffering from diseases were brought to him, and 
he laid his hands upon them, and told them to have faith 
and they would be healed. 

When strangers inquired the meaning of this disturb- 
ance, they were told that it was Joshua, or as the Greek 
Jews called him, Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth. It was 
believed by the common people that he was the Messiah. 
But the Pharisees did not acknowledge his mission. For 
Jesus belonged to Galilee, and the natives of that coun- 
try spoke a vile patois, and their orthodoxy was in bad 
repute. “Out of Galilee,” said the Pharisees with scorn, 
“out of Galilee, there cometh no prophet.” 

All persons of imaginative minds know what it is to 
be startled by a thought; they know how ideas flash 
into the mind, as if from without; and what physical 
excitement they can at times produce. They also know 
what it is to be possessed by a presentiment, a deep, 
overpowering conviction of things to come. They know 
how often such presentiments are true; and also how 
often they are false. 

The prophet or seer is a man of strong imaginative 
powers, which have not been calmed by education. The 
ideas which occur to his mind often present themselves 
to his eyes and ears in corresponding sights and sounds. 


THE GIFT OF PROPHECY 193 


As one in a dream he hears voices and sees forms; his 
whole mien is that of a man who is possessed; his face 
sometimes becomes transfigured, and appears to glow 
with light; but usually the symptoms are of a more 
painful kind, such as foaming of the mouth, writhing 
of the limbs, and a bubbling ebullition of the voice. He 
is sometimes seized by these violent ideas against his 
will. But he can, to a certain extent, produce them by 
long fasting and by long prayer; or, in other words, by 
the continued concentration of the mind upon a single 
point; by music, dancing, and fumigations. The disease 
is contagious, as is shown by the anecdote of Saul among 
the prophets; and similar scenes have been frequently 
witnessed by travellers in the East. 

Prophets have existed in all countries and at all times; 
but the gift becomes rare in the same proportion as 
people learn to read and write. Second sight in the 
Highlands disappeared before the school; and so it has 
been in other lands. Prophets were numerous in ancient 
Greece. In the Homeric period they opposed the royal 
power, and constituted another authority by the grace 
of God. Herodotus alludes to men who went about 
prophesying in hexameters. Thucydides says, that 
while the Peloponnesians were ravaging the lands of 
Athens, there were prophets within the city uttering, all 
kinds of oracles, some for going out, and some for 
remaining in. It was a prophet who obtained the pass- 
ing of that law under which Socrates was afterwards 
condemned to death. In Greece, in Egypt, and in Israel, 
the priests adopted and localised the prophetic power. . 
The oracles of Ammon, Delphi, and Shiloh, bore the 
same relation to individual prophets as an Established 
Church to itinerant preachers. Syria was especially fer- 
tile in prophets. Marius kept a Syrian prophetess named 
Martha, who attended him in all his campaigns. It 
matters nothing what the Syrian religion might be; the 
same phenomenon again and again recurs. Balaam was 


194 ANGEL AND BEAST 


a prophet before Israel was established. Then came the 
prophets of the Jews: and they again have been suc- 
ceeded by the Christian cave saint and the Moslem 
dervish, whom the Arabs have always regarded with 
equal veneration. But it was among the Jews, from 
the time of Samuel to the captivity that prophets or 
dervishes were most abundant. They were then as plen- 
tiful as politicians: and politicians in fact they were, 
and prophesied against each other. Some would be for 
peace, and some would be for war: some were partisans 
of Egypt, others were partisans of Babylon. The 
prophetic ideas differ in no respects from those of 
ordinary men, except in the sublime or ridiculous effect 
which they produce on the prophetic mind and body. 
Sometimes the predictions of the Jewish prophets were 
fulfilled; and sometimes they were not. To use the 
Greek phrase, their oracles were often of base metal; 
and in such a case the unfortunate dervish was jeered at 
as a false prophet, and would in his turn reproach the 
Lord for having made him a fool before men. 

The Jewish prophet was an extraordinary being. He 
was something more and something less than a man. 
He spoke like an angel; he acted like a beast. As soon 
as he received his mission, he ceased to wash. He often 
retired to the mountains, where he might be seen 
skipping from rock to rock like a goat; or he wandered 
in the desert with a leather girdle round his loins, eat- 
ing roots and wild honey; sometimes browsing on grass 
and flowers. He always adapted his actions to the idea 
which he desired to convey. He not only taught in 
parables, but performed them. For instance, Isaiah 
walked naked through the streets to show that the Lord 
would strip Jerusalem, and make her bare. Ezekiel cut 
off his hair and beard and weighed it in the scales: a 
third part he burnt with fire; a third part he strewed 
about with a knife; and a third part he scattered to the 
wind. This was also intended to illustrate the calamities 


THE PROPHET AND THE POOR 195 


which would befal the Jews. Moreover, he wore a 
rotten girdle as a sign that their city would decay, and 
buttered his bread in a manner we would rather not 
describe, as a sign that they would eat defiled bread 
among the Gentiles. Jeremiah wore a wooden yoke 
as @ sign that they should be taken into captivity. As 
a sign that the Jews were guilty of wantonness in wor- 
shipping idols, Hosea cohabited three years with a 
woman of the town; and as a sign that they committed 
adultery in turning from the Lord their God, he went 
and lived with another man’s wife. 

Such is the ludicrous side of Jewish prophecy; yet 
it has also its serious and noble side. The prophets were 
always the tribunes of the people; the protectors of the 
‘ poor. As the tyrant revelled in his palace on the taxes 
extorted from industrious peasants, a strange figure 
would descend from the mountains, and, stalking to the 
throne, would stretch forth a lean and swarthy arm, and 
denounce him in the name of Jehovah, and bid him 
repent, or the Lord’s wrath should fall upon him, and 
dogs should drink his blood. In the first period of the 
Jewish life, the prophets exercised these functions of 
censor and of tribune, and preached loyalty to the god 
who had brought them up out of Egypt with a strong 
hand. They were also intensely fanatical, and pub- 
lished Jehovah’s wrath not only against the king who 
was guilty of idolatry and vice, but also against the king 
who took a census, or imported horses, or made treaties 
of friendship with his neighbours. In the second period 
the prophets declared the unity of God, and exposed the 
folly of idol-worship. They did even more than this. 
They opposed the Ceremonial Law, and preached the 
religion of the heart. They declared that God did not 
care for their Sabbaths and their festivals, and their 
new moons, and their prayers, and church services, and 
ablutions, and their sacrifices of meat and oil, and of 
incense from Arabia, and of the sweet cane from a far 


' 196 PROPHET VERSUS PRIEST 


country. “Cease to do evil,” said they; “learn to do 
well; relieve the oppressed; judge the fatherless; plead 
for the widow.” It is certain that the doctrines of the 
great prophets were heretical. Jeremiah flatly declared, 
that in the day that God brought them from the land 
of Egypt, he did not command them concerning burnt- 
offerings or sacrifices: and this statement would be of 
historical value, if prophets always spoke the truth. 

They were bitter adversaries of the kings and priests, 
and the consolers of the oppressed. “The Lord hath 
appointed me,” says one whose oracles have been edited 
with those of Isaiah, but whose period was later, and 
whose true name is not known, “the Lord hath appointed 
me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent 
me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to 
the captives, to give unto them that mourn beauty for 
ashes, the oi! of joy for lamentation, the garment of 
praise for the spirit of heaviness.” 

The aristocracy who lived by the altar did not receive 
these attacks in a spirit of submission. There was a law 
ascribed to Moses, like all the other Jewish laws, but 
undoubtedly enacted by the priest party under the 
kings, that false prophets should be put to death; and 
though it was dangerous to touch prophets on account 
of the people, who were always on their side, they were 
frequently subjected to persecution. Urijah fled from 
King Jehoiakim to Egypt; armed men were sent after 
him; he was arrested, brought back and _ killed. 
Zachariah was stoned to death in the courts of the 
Temple. Jeremiah was formally tried, and was ac- 
quitted; but he had a narrow escape: he was led, as he 
remarked, like a sheep to the slaughter. At another 
time he was imprisoned; at another time he was let 
down by ropes into a dry well; and there is a tradition 
that he was stoned to death by the Jews in Egypt after 
all. The nominal Isaiah chants the requiem of such a 
martyr in a poem of exquisite beauty and grandeur 


A PROPHET MARTYR 197 
The prophet is described as one of hideous appearance, 
so that people hid their faces from him: “his visage was 
marred more than any man, and his form more than 
the sons of men.” The people rejected his mission and 
refused to acknowledge him as a prophet. “He was 
despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief.’ He was arraigned on a charge 
of false prophecy; he made no defence, and he was put 
to death. “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he opened 
not his mouth; he was brought as a lamb to the slaugh- 
ter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he 
opened not his mouth. He was taken from the prison to 
the judgment; he was cut off from the land of the liv- 
ing.” It was believed by the Jews that the death of 
such a man was accepted by God as a human sacrifice, 
an atonement for the sins of the people, just as the 
priest in the olden time heaped the sins of the people on 
the scape-goat, and sent him out into the wilderness. 
“He bare the sins of many, and made intercession for 
the transgressors. The Lord hath laid on him the 1n- 
iquity of us all. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and 
hath carried our sorrows. His soul was made an offering 
for sin. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was 
bruised for our iniquitres, and with his stripes we are 
healed.” 

There are many worthy people who think it a very 
extraordinary thing that this poem can be used, almost 
word for word, to describe the rejected mission and 
martyrdom of Jesus. But as the Hebrew prophets 
resembled one another, and were tried before the same 
tribunal, under the same law, the coincidence is not 
surprising. A poetical description, in vague and general 
terms, of the Rebellion of the English people and the 
execution of Charles I, would apply equally well to the 
rebellion of the French people and the execution of 
Louis XVI. 

The prophet of Nazareth did not differ in tempera- 


198 THE PROPHET OF NAZARETH 


ment and character from the noble prophets of the 
ancient period. He preached, as they did, the religion 
of the heart; he attacked, as they did, the ceremonial 
laws; he offered, as they did, consolation to the poor; he 
poured forth, as they did, invectives against the rulers 
and the rich. But his predictions were entirely different. 
from theirs, for he lived, theologically speaking, in an- 
other world. The old prophets could only urge men 
to do good that the Lord might make them prosperous. 
on earth, or, at the most, that they might obtain an 
everlasting name. They could only promise to the 
people the restoration of Jerusalem and the good things. 
of the Gentiles; the reconciliation of Judah and 
Ephraim, and the Gathering of the Dispersed. The 
morality which Jesus preached was also supported by 
promises and threats, but by promises and threats of a 
more exalted kind: it was also based upon self-interest; 
but upon self-interest applied to a future life. For this 
he was indebted to the age in which he lived. He was 
superior as a prophet to Isaiah, as Newton as an astrono- 
mer was superior to Kepler, Kepler to Copernicus, Coper- 
nicus to Ptolemy, Ptolemy to Hipparchus, and Hippar- 
chus to the unknown Egyptian or Chaldean priest who 
first began to register eclipses and to catalogue the stars. 
Jesus was a carpenter by trade, and was urged by a 
prophetic call to leave his workshop and to go forth 
into the world, preaching the gospel which he had re- 
ceived. The current fancies respecting the approaching 
destruction of the world, the conquest of the Evil Power, 
and the reign of God had fermented in his mind, and 
had made him the subject of a remarkable hallucina- 
tion. He believed that he was the promised Messiah 
or Son of Man, who would be sent to prepare the world 
for the kingdom of God, and who would be appointed to 
judge the souls of men, and to reign over them on earth. 
He was a man of the people, a rustic and an artizan: he 
was also an imitator of the ancient prophets, whose 


CHARACTER OF JESUS 199 


works he studied, and whose words were always on his 
lips. Thus he was led as man and prophet to take the 
part of the poor. He sympathised deeply with the out- 
casts, the afflicted, and the oppressed. To children and 
to women, to all who suffered and shed tears; to all from 
whom men turned with loathing and contempt; to the 
girl of evil life, who bemoaned her shame; to the tax- 
gatherer, who crouched before his God in humility and 
woe: to the sorrowful in spirit and the weak in heart; to 
the weary and the heavy laden Jesus appeared as a shin- 
ing angel with words sweet as the honey-comb, and bright 
as the golden day. He laid his hands on the heads of the 
lowly; he bade the sorrowful be of good cheer, for that 
the day of their deliverance and their glory was at 
hand. 

If we regard Jesus only in his relations with those 
whose brief and bitter lives he purified from evil, and 
illumined with ideal joys, we might believe him to have 
been the perfect type of a meek and suffering saint. 
But his character had two sides, and we must look at 
both. Such is the imperfection of human nature, that 
extreme love is counterbalanced by extreme hate; every 
virtue has its attendant vice, which is excited by the 
same stimulants, which is nourished by the same food. 
Martyrs and persecutors resemble one another; their 
minds are composed of the same materials. The man 
who will suffer death for his religious faith, will en- 
deavour to enforce it even unto death. In fact, if Chris- 
tianity were true, religious persecution would become a 
pious and charitable duty; if God designs to punish 
men for their opinions, it would be an act of mercy to 
mankind to extinguish such opinions. By burning the 
bodies of those who diffuse them, many souls would be 
saved that would otherwise be lost, and so there would 
be an economy of torment in the long run. It is there- 
fore not surprising that enthusiasts should be intolerant. 
Jesus was not able to display the spirit of a persecutor 


200 DARK SIDE 


in his deeds; but he displayed it in his words. Believing 
that it was in his power to condemn his fellow-creatures 
to eternal torture, he did so condemn by anticipation 
all the rich and almost all the learned men among the 
Jews. It was his belief that God reigned in heaven, but 
that Satan reigned on earth. In a few years God would 
invade and subdue the earth. It was therefore his 
prayer, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done in earth 
as it is in heaven.” God’s will was not at that time done 
On earth, which was in the possession of the Prince of 
Darkness. It was evident, therefore, that all prosperous 
men were favourites of Satan, and that the unfortunate 
were favourites of God. Those would go with their 
master to eternal pain: these would be rewarded by 
their master with eterna] joy. He did not say that 
Dives was bad, or that Lazarus was good, but merely 
that Dives had received his good things on earth, and 
Lazarus his evil things on earth: that afterwards Laz- 
arus was rewarded, and Dives tormented. Dives might 
have been as virtuous as the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
who is also clothed in fine linen, and who fares sump- 
tuously every day; Lazarus might have been as vicious 
as the Lambeth pauper, who prowls round the palace 
gates, and whose mind, like his body, is full of sores. 
Not only the inoffensive rich were doomed by Jesus to 
hell fire, but also all those who did anything to merit 
the esteem of their fellow-men. Even those that were 
happy and enjoyed life—unless it was in his own com- 
pany—were lost souls. “Woe unto you that are rich,” 
said he, “for ye have received your consolation. Woe 
unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger. Woe unto 
you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe 
unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so 
did their fathers of the false prophets.” He also pro- 
nounced eternal punishment on all those who refused to 
join him. “He that believeth and is baptized,” said 


MORAL INVESTMENTS 201 


he, “shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be 
damned.” 

He supposed that when the kingdom of God was 
established on earth, he would reign over it as viceroy. 
Those who wished to live under him in that kingdom 
must renounce all the pleasures of Satan’s world. They 
must sell their property, and give the proceeds to the 
poor; discard all domestic ties; cultivate self-abasement, 
and do nothing which could possibly raise them in the 
esteem of other people. For they could not serve two 
masters; they could not be rewarded in the kingdom of 
this world, which was ruled by Satan, and also in the 
new kingdom, which would be ruled by God. If they 
gave a dinner, they were not to ask their rich friends, 
lest they should be asked back to dinner, and thus lose 
their reward. They must ask only the poor, and for 
that benevolent action they would be recompensed here- 
after. They were not to give alms in public, or to pray 
in public: and when they fasted, they were to pretend 
to feast; for if it was perceived that they were devout 
men, and were praised for their devotion, they would 
lose their reward. Robbery and violence they were not 
to resist. If aman smote them on one cheek, they were 
to offer him the other also; if he took their coat, they 
were to give him their shirt; if he forced them to go with 
him one mile, they were to go with him two. They were 
to love their enemies, to do good to them that did them 
evil; and why? Not because it was good so to do, but 
that they might be paid for the same with compound 
interest in a future state. 

It might be supposed that as in the philosophy of 
Jesus poverty was equivalent to virtue, and misery a 
passport to eternal bliss, sickness would be also a 
beatific state. But Jesus, like the other Jews, believed 
that disease proceeded from sin. In Palestine it was 
always held that a priest or a prophet was the best 
physician, and prayer, with the laying on of hands, the 


202 THE MIRACLE DOCTOR 


most efficacious of all medicines. Among the sins of 
Asa it is mentioned that having sore feet, he went to a 
doctor instead of to the Lord. Jesus informed those on 
whom he laid his hands that their sins were forgiven 
them, and warned those he healed to sin no more lest a 
worse thing should come upon them. Such theological 
practitioners have always existed in the East, and exist 
there at the present day. A text from the Koran written 
on a board and washed off into a cup of water is con- 
sidered God’s own physic; and as the patient believes 
in it, and as the mind can sometimes influence the body, 
the disease is occasionally healed upon the spot. The 
exploits of the miracle doctor are exaggerated in his 
lifetime; and after his death it is declared that he 
restored sight to men that were born blind, cleansed the 
lepers, made the lame to walk, cured the incurable, and 
raised the dead to life. 

In Jerusalem the scribe had succeeded to the seer. 
The Jews had already a proverb, “A scholar is greater 
than a prophet.’’ The supernatural gift was regarded 
with suspicion; and if successful with the vulgar, excited 
envy and indignation. In the East, at the present day, 
there is a permanent hostility between the mollah, or 
doctor of the law, and the dervish, or illiterate “man of 
God.” Jesus was, in point of fact, a dervish; and the 
learned Pharisees were not inclined to admit the author- 
ity of one who spoke a rustic patois and misplaced the 
h, and who was no doubt like other prophets, uncouth 
in his appearance and uncleanly in his garb. At Jer- 
usalem Jesus completely failed; and this failure appears 
to have stung him into bitter abuse of his successful 
rivals, the missionary Pharisees, and into the wildest 
extravagance of speech. He called the learned doctors 
a generation of vipers, whited sepulchres, and serpents; 
he declared that they should not escape the damnation 
of hell. Because they had made the washing of hands 
before dinner a religious ablution, Jesus, with equal 


MADNESS 203 


bigotry, would not wash his hands at all, though people 
eat with the hand in the East, and dip their hands in the 
same dish. He told his disciples that if a man called 
another a fool, he would be in danger of hell-fire; and 
whoever spoke against the Holy Ghost, it would not be 
forgiven him “neither in this world nor in the world to 
come.” He said that if a man had done anything 
wrong with his hand or his eye, it were better for him to 
cut off his guilty hand, or to pluck out his guilty eye, 
rather than to go with his whole body into hell. He 
cursed a fig-tree because it bore no fruit, although it 
was not the season of fruit—an action as rational as 
that of Xerxes, who flogged the sea. He retorted to those 
who accused him of breaking the Sabbath, that he was 
above the Sabbath. 

It is evident that a man who talked in such a manner, 
who believed that it was in his power to abrogate the 
laws of the land, to forgive sins, to bestow eternal hap- 
piness upon his friends, and to send all those who differed 
from him to everlasting flames, would lay himself open to 
a charge of blasphemy; and it is also evident that the 
generation of vipers would not hesitate to take advantage 
of the circumstance. But whatever share personal en- 
mity might have had in the charges that were made 
against him, he was lawfully condemned, according to 
Bible law. He declared in open court that they would see 
him descending in the clouds at the right hand of the 
power of God. The high priest tore his robes in horror; 
false prophecy and blasphemy had been uttered to his 
face. 

After the execution of Jesus his disciples did not re- 
turn to Galilee: they waited at Jerusalem for his second 
coming. They believed that he had died as a human 
sacrifice for the sins of the people, and that he would 
speedily return with an army of angels to establish the 
kingdom of God on earth. Already in his lifetime these 
simple creatures had begun to dispute about the dignities 


204 WAITING 


which they should hold at court; and Jesus, who was not 
less simple than themselves, had promised that they 
should sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes 
of Israel. He had assured them again and again, in the 
most positive language, that this event would take place 
in their own lifetime. ‘Verily, verily,” he said, “there are 
some standing here who shall not taste of death till they 
see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” ‘They there- 
fore remained at Jerusalem, and scrupulously followed 
his commands. They established a community of goods, 
or at least gave away their superfluities to the poorer 
members of the church, and had charitable arrangements 
for relieving the sick. They admitted proselytes with 
the ceremony of baptism. At the evening repast which 
they held together, they broke bread and drank wine 
in a certain solemn manner, as Jesus had been wont to 
do, and as they especially remembered he did at the 
last supper. But in all respects they were Jews just as 
Jesus himself had been a Jew. They attended divine 
service in the temple; they offered up the customary 
sacrifices; they kept the Sabbath; they abstained from 
forbidden meats. They held merely the one dogma, that 
Jesus was the Messiah, and that he would return in power 
and glory to judge the earth. 

Jerusalem was frequented at the time of the pilgrim- 
age by thousands of Jews from the great cities of Europe, 
North Africa and Asia-Minor. These pilgrims were of a 
very different class from the fishermen of Galilee. They 
were Jews in religion, but they were scarcely Jews in 
nationality. They were members of great and flourish- 
ing municipalities; they enjoyed political liberty and 
civil rights. They prayed in Greek, and read the Bible 
in a Greek translation. Their doctrine was tolerant 
and latitudinarian. At Alexandria there was a school of 
Jews who had mingled the metaphysics of Plato with 
their own theology. Many of these Greek Jews became 
converted, and it is to them that Jesus owes his reputa- 


THE LIBERAL PARTY 205 


tion, Christianity its existence. The Palestine Jews de- 
sired to reserve the Gospel to the Jews; they had no 
taste or sympathy for the Gentiles, from whom they lived 
entirely apart, and who were associated in their minds 
with the abominations of idolatry, the payment of taxes, 
and the persecution of Antiochus. But these same Gen- 
tiles, these poor benighted Greeks and Romans, were the 
compatriots and fellow-citizens of the Hellenic Jews, who 
therefore entertained more liberal ideas upon the subject. 
Two parties accordingly arose-—the conservative, or 
Jewish party, who would receive no converts except 
according to the custom of the orthodox Jews in such 
cases; and the Greek party, who agitated for complete 
freedom from the law of Moses. The latter were headed 
by Paul, an enthusiastic and ambitious man, who refused 
to place himself under the rule of the twelve apostles, 
but claimed a special revelation. A conference was held 
at Jerusalem, and a compromise was arranged to the 
effect that pagan converts should not be subjected to 
the rite of circumcision, but that they should abstain 
from pork and oysters, and should eat no animals which 
had not been killed by the knife. But the compromise 
did not last. The church diverged in discipline and 
dogma more and more widely from its ancient form, 
till in the second century the Christians of Judea, who 
had faithfully followed the customs and tenets of the 
twelve apostles, were informed that they were heretics. 
During that interval a new religion had arisen. Chris- 
tianity had conquered paganism, and paganism had 
corrupted Christianity. The legends which belonged 
to Osiris and Apollo had been applied to the life of 
Jesus. The single Deity of the Jews had been ex- 
changed for the Trinity, which the Egyptians had in- 
vented, and which Plato had idealised into a philosophic 
system. The man who had said “Why callest thou me 
good? there is none good but one, that is God,” had 
now himself been made a god, or the third part of one. 


206 THE GHETTO 


‘The Hebrew element, however, had not been entirely 
cast off. With some little inconsistency the Jewish 
sacred books were said to be inspired, and nearly all the 
injunctions contained in them were disobeyed. It was 
heresy to deny that the Jews were the chosen people; 
and it was heresy to assert that the Jews would be saved. 

The Christian religion was at first spread by Jews, 
who, either as missionaries or in the course of their 
ordinary avocations, made the circuit of the Mediter- 
ranean world. In all large towns there was a Ghetto, or 
Jews’ quarter, in which the traveller was received by 
the people of his own race. There was no regular clergy 
among the Jews, and it was their custom to allow, and 
even to invite the stranger to preach in their synagogue. 
Doctrines were not strictly defined, and they listened 
without anger, and perhaps with some hope, to the state- 
ment, that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, and that 
he would shortly return to establish his kingdom upon 
earth. But when these Christians began to preach that 
the eating of pork was not a deadly sin, and that God 
was better pleased with a sprinkle than a slash, they were 
speedily stigmatised as heretics, and all the Jewries in 
the world were closed against them. 

Those strange religious and commercial communities, 
those landless colonies which an Oriental people had 
established all over the world, from the Rhone and the 
Rhine to the Oxus and J axartes; which corresponded 
regularly among themselves, and whose members rec- 
ognised each other, wherever they might be and in 
whatever garb, by the solemn phrase, Hear Israel, there 
as one God! afforded a model for the Christian churches 
of the early days. The primitive Christians did not, 
indeed, live together in one quarter, like the Jews, 
but they gathered together for purposes of worship and 
administration in set places at appointed times. They 
did not establish commercial relations with the Chris- 
tians in other towns, but they kept up an active social 


ROME 207 


correspondence, and hospitably entertained the foreign 
brother who brought letters of introduction as creden- 
tials of his creed. Travelling, though not always free 
from danger, was unobstructed in those days; coasters 
sailed frequently from port to port, and the large towns 
were connected by paved roads with a posting-house at 
every six-mile stage. All inn-keepers spoke Greek: it 
was not necessary to learn Latin even in order to reside 
at Rome. 

And now we return to that magnificent city which 
was adorned with the spoils of a hundred lands, into 
which streamed all the wealth, the energy, and the am- 
bition of the East and West. Ostia-on-the-sea where 
the ancient citizens had boiled their salt, was now a 
great port, in which the grain from Egypt and Car- 
thage was stored up in huge buildings, and to which, 
in the summer and autumn, came ships from all parts 
of the world. The road to Rome was fifteen miles in 
length, and was lined with villas and with lofty tombs. 
Outside the city, on the neighboring hills, were gardens 
open to the public; and from these hills were conducted 
streams, by subterranean pipes, into the town, where 
they were trained to run like rivulets, making everywhere 
a pleasant murmur, here and there reposing in artificial 
grottoes, or dancing as fountains in the air. The streets 
were narrow, and the tall houses buried them in deep 
shade. They were lined with statues; there was a popula- 
tion of marble men. Flowers glittered on roofs and 
balconies. Vast palaces of green, and white, and golden 
tinted marble were surrounded by venerable trees. The 
Via Sacra was the Regent Street of Rome, and was bor- 
dered with stalls, where the silks and spices of the East, 
the wool of Spain, the glass wares of Alexandria, the 
smoked fish of the Black Sea, the wines of the Greek 
isles, Cretan apples, Alpine cheese, the oysters of Britain, 
and the veined wood of the Atlas, were exposed for sale. 
In that splendid thoroughfare a hundred languages might 


208 A STROLL DOWN THE VIA LARGA 


be heard at once, and as many costumes were displayed 
as if the universe had been invited to a fancy ball. 
Sometimes a squadron of the Imperial Guard would 
ride by—flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Germans, covered with 
shining steel. Then a procession of pale-faced, shaven 
Egyptian priests, bearing a statue of Isis, and singing 
melancholy hymns. A Greek philosopher would next pass 
along with abstracted eyes and ragged cloak, followed by 
a boy with a pile of books. Men from the East might 
be seen with white turbans and flowing robes, or in 
sheep-skin mantles, with high black caps; and _ per- 
haps, beside them, a tattooed Briton gaping at the shops. 
Then would come a palanquin with curtains half drawn, 
carried along at a swinging pace by sturdy Cappadocian 
slaves, and within, the fashionable lady with supercilious, 
half-closed eyes, holding a erystal ball between her hands 
to keep them cool. Next, a senator in white and purple 
robe, receiving, as he walked along, the greetings and 
kisses of his friends and clients, not always of the 
cleanest kind. So crowded were the streets that carriages 
were not allowed to pass through them in the day-time. 
- The only vehicles that appeared were the carts employed 
in the public works; and as they came rolling and 
grinding along, bearing huge beams and blocks of stone, 
the driver cracked his whip and pushed people against 
the wall, and there was much squeezing and confusion, 
during which pickpockets, elegantly dressed, their hands 
covered with rings, were busy at their work, pretending 
to assist the ladies in the crowd. People from the 
country passed towards the market, their mules or asses 
laden with panniers in which purple grapes and golden 
fruits were piled up in profusion, and refreshed the eye, 
which was dazzled by the stony glare. Hawkers went 
about offering matches in exchange for broken glass; 
and the keepers of the cook-shops called out in cheerful 
tones, ‘Smoking sausages!” “Sweet boiled peas!” “Honey 
wine, O honey wine!” And then there was the crowd 


ROME SLEEPING 209 


itself: the bright-eyed, dark-browed Roman people, who 
played in the shade at dice, or mora, like the old Egyp- 
tians; who lounged through the temples, which were also 
the museums, to look at the curiosities; or who stood in 
groups reading the advertisements on the walls and the 
programmes, which announced that on such and such a 
day there would be a grand performance in the circus, 
and that all would be done in the best style. A blue 
awning, with white stars in imitation of the sky, would 
shade them from the sun; trees would be transplanted, 
a forest would appear upon the stage; giraffes, zebras, 
elephants, lions, ostriches, stags, and wild boars would 
be hunted down and killed; armies of gladiators would 
contend; and, by way of after-piece, the arena would 
be filled with water, and a naval battle would be per- 
formed,—ships, soldiers, wounds, agony, and death being 
admirably real. 

So passed the Roman street-life day, and with the 
first hours of darkness the noise and turmoil did not 
cease; for then the travelling carriages rattled. towards 
the gates, and carts filled with dung—the only export 
of the city. The music of serenades rose softly in the 
air, and sounds of laughter from the tavern. The night 
watch made their rounds, their armour rattling as they 
passed. Lights were extinguished, householders put up 
their shutters, to which bells were fastened, for burglaries 
frequently occurred. And then for a time the city would 
be almost still. Dogs, hated by the Romans, prowled 
about sniffing for their food. Men of prey from the 
Pontine Marshes crept stealthily along the black side 
of the street signalling to one another with sharp whistles 
or hissing sounds. Sometimes torches would flash against 
the walls as a knot of young gallants reeled home from 
a debauch, breaking the noses of the street statues on 
their way. And at such an hour there were men and 
women who stole forth from their various houses, and 
with mantles covering their faces, hastened to a lonely 


210 THE CATACOMBS 


spot in the suburbs, and entered the mouti: of a dark 
cave. They passed through long galleries, moist with 
damp and odorous of death, for coffins were ranged on 
either side in tiers one above the other. But soon sweet 
musi¢e sounded from the depths of the abyss; an open 
chamber came to view, and a tomb covered with flowers, 
laid out with a repast, encircled by men and women, who 
were apparelled in white robes, and who sang a psalm 
of joy. It was in the catacombs of Rome where the dead 
had been buried in the ancient times that the Christians 
met to discourse on the progress of the faith; to recount 
the trials which they suffered in their homes; to confess 
to one another their sins and doubts, their carnal pre- 
sumption, or their lack of faith; and also to relate their 
sweet visions of the night, the answers to their earnest 
prayers. They listened to the exhortations of their 
elders, and perhaps to a letter from one of the apostles. 
They then supped together as Jesus had supped with his 
disciples, and kissed one another when the love feast 
was concluded. At these meetings there was no distinc- 
tion of rank; the high-born lady embraced the slave 
whom she had once scarcely regarded as a man. Hu- 
mility and submission were the cardinal virtues of the 
early Christians; slavery had not been forbidden by the 
apostles because it was the doctrine of Jesus that those 
who were lowest in this world would be the highest in the 
next; his theory of heaven being earth turned upside 
down. Slavery therefore was esteemed a state of grace, 
and some Christians appear to have rejected the freed- 
man’s cap on religious grounds, for Paul exhorts such 
persons to become free if they can; advice which slaves 
do not usually require. 

As time passed on the belief of the first Christians 
that the end of the world was near at hand became 
fainter, and gradually died away. It was then declared 
that God had favoured the earth with a respite of one 
thousand years, In the meantime, the gospel or good 


THE GOOD TIDINGS 211 


tidings which the Christians announced was this. There 
was one God, the Creator of the world. He had long 
been angry with men because they were what he had 
made them. But he sent his only begotten son into a 
corner of Syria; and because his son had been mur- 
dered his wrath had been partly appeased. He would 
not torture to eternity all the souls that he had made; 
he would spare at least one in every million that were 
born. Peace unto earth and good will unto men if they 
would act in a certain manner; if not, fire and brim- 
stone and the noisome pit. He was the Emperor of 
Heaven, the tyrant of the skies; the pagan gods were 
rebels, with whom he was at war, although he was All- 
powerful, and whom he allowed to seduce the souls of 
men although he was All-merciful. Those who joined 
the army of the cross might entertain some hopes of 
being saved; those who followed the faith of their 
fathers would follow their fathers to hell-fire. This 
creed with the early Christians was not a matter of half- 
belief and metaphysical debate, as it is at the present 
day, when Catholics and Protestants discuss hell-fire 
with courtesy and comfort over filberts and port wine. 
To those credulous and imaginative minds God was a live 
king, hell a place in which real bodies were burnt with 
real flames, which was filled with the sickening stench 
of roasted flesh, which resounded with agonising shrieks. 
They saw their fathers and mothers, their sisters and 
their dearest friends, hurrying onward to that fearful pit 
unconscious of danger, laughing and singing, lured on 
by the fiends whom they called the gods. They felt 
as we should feel were we to see a blind man walking 
towards a river bank. Who would have the heart to 
turn aside and say it was the business of the police to 
interfere? But what was death, a mere momentary 
pain compared with tortures that would have no end? 
Who that could hope to save a soul by tears and sup- 
plications would remain quiescent as men do now, shrug- 


212 THE MISSIONARY AGE 


ging their shoulders and saying that it is not good 
taste to argue on religion, and that conversion is the 
office of the clergy? The Christians of that period felt 
more and did more than those of the present day, not 
because they were better men, but because they believed 
more; and they believed more because they knew less. 
Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never 
doubts at all. 

In that age the Christians believed much, and their 
lives were rendered beautiful by sympathy and love. 
The dark, deep river did not exist, it was only a fancy 
of the brain: yet the impulse was not less real. The 
heart-throb, the imploring cry, the swift leap, the trem- 
bling hand outreached to save ; the transport of delight, 
the ecstasy of tears, the sweet, calm joy that a man 
had been wrested from the jaws of death—are these 
less beautiful, are these less real, because it afterwards 
appeared that the man had been in no danger after all? 

In that age every Christian was a missionary. The 
soldier sought to win recruits for the heavenly host: 
the prisoner of war discoursed to his Persian jailer; 
the slave girl whispered the gospel in the ears of her. 
mistress as she built up the mass of towered hair; there 
stood men in cloak and beard at street corners, who, 
when the people, according to the manners of the day, 
invited them to speak, preached not the doctrines of 
the Painted Porch, but the words of a new and strange 
philosophy; the young wife threw her arms round her 
husband’s neck and made him agree to be baptised, 
that their souls might not be parted after death. How 
awful were the threats of the Heavenly despot; how 
sweet were the promises of a life beyond the grave. 
The man who strove to obey the law which was written 
on his heart, yet often fell for want of Support, was now 
promised a rich reward if he would persevere. The 
disconsolate woman, whose age of beauty and triumph 
had passed away, was taught that if she became a Chris- 


HEAVENLY ILLUSIONS 213 


tian her body in all the splendour of its youth would rise 
again. The poor slave, who sickened from weariness of a 
life in which there was for him no hope, received the as- 
surance of another life in which he would find luxury and 
pleasure when death released him from his woe. Ah, 
sweet fallacious hopes of a barbarous and poetic age! 
Ulusion still cherished, for mankind is yet in its romantic 
youth! How easy it would be to endure without repining 
the toils and troubles of this miserable life if indeed we 
could believe that, when its brief period was past, we 
should be united to those whom we have loved, to 
those whom death has snatched away, or whom fate 
has parted from us by barriers cold and deep and hope- 
less as the grave. If we could believe this, the short- 
ness of life would comfort us—how quickly the time 
flies by!—and we should welcome death. But we do 
not believe it, and so we cling to our tortured lives, 
dreading the dark Nothingness, dreading the dispersal 
of our elemcnts into cold unconscious space. As drops 
in the ocean of water, as atoms in the ocean of air, as 
sparks in the ocean of fire within the earth, our minds 
do their appointed work and serve to build up the 
strength and beauty of the one great Human Mind 
which grows from century to century, from age to age, 
and is perhaps itself a mere molecule within some higher 
mind. 

Soon it was whispered that there was in Rome a 
secret society which worshipped an unknown God. Its 
members wore no garlands on their brows; they never 
entered the temples; they were governed by laws which 
strange and fearful oaths bound them ever to obey; their 
speech was not as the speech of ordinary men; they 
buried instead of burning the bodies of the dead; they 
married, they educated their children after a manner 
of their own. The politicians who regarded the Es- 
tablished Church as essential to the safety of the State 
became alarmed. Secret societies were forbidden by the 


914 THE ATHEISTS 


law, and here was a society in which the tutelary gods 
of Rome were denounced as rebels and usurpers. The 
Christians, it is true, preached passive obedience and the 
divine right of kings; but they proclaimed that all men 
were equal before God, a dangerous doctrine in a com- 
munity where more than half the men were slaves. The 
idle and superstitious lazzaroni did not love the gods, 
but they believed in them; and they feared lest the 
“atheists,” as they called the Christians, would provoke 
the vengeance of the whole divine federation against 
the city, and that all would be involved in the common 
ruin. Soon there came a time when every public calam- 
ity, an epidemic, a fire, a famine, or a flood was ascribed 
to the anger of the offended gods. And then arose im- 
perial edicts, popular commotions, and the terrible street- 
ery of Christiant ad Leones! 

But the persecutions thus provoked were fitful and 
brief, and served only to fan the flame. For to those 
who believed in heaven—not as men now believe, with 
a slight tincture of, perhaps, unconscious doubt, but as 
men believe in things which they see and hear and feel 
and know—death was merely a surgical operation, with 
the absolute certainty of consequent release from pain, 
and of entrance into unutterable bliss. The Christians, 
therefore, encountered it with joy; and the sight of their 
cheerful countenances as they were being led to execution 
induced many to inquire what this belief might be which 
could thus rob death of its dreadfulness and its despair. 

But the great moralists and thinkers of the Empire 
looked coldly down upon this new religion. In their 
pure and noble writings they either allude to Christi- 
anity with scorn, or do not allude to it at all. This 
circumstance has occasioned much surprise: it can, how- 
ever, be easily explained. The success of Christianity 
among the people, and its want of success among the 
philosophers, were due to the same cause—the supersti- 
tion of the Christian teachers. 


THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 215 


Among the missionaries of the present day there are 
many men who, in earnestness and self-devotion, are 
not inferior to those of the Apostolic times. Yet they 
almost invariably fail: they are too enlightened for their 
congregations. With respect to their own religion, in- 
deed, that charge cannot be justly brought against them. 
Set them talking on the forbidden apple, Noah’s ark, 
the sun standing still to facilitate murder, the donkey 
preaching to its master, the whale swallowing and eject- 
ing Jonah, the immaculate conception, the water turned 
to wine, the fig-tree withered by a curse—and they 
will reason like children; or, in other words, they will 
not reason at all: they will merely repeat what they 
have been taught by their mammas. But when they dis- 
course to the savage concerning his belief, they use the 
logic of Voltaire, and deride witches and men possessed 
in a style which Jesus and the twelve apostles, the 
Fathers of the church, the popes of the Middle Ages, 
and Martin Luther himself, would have accounted 
blasphemous and contrary to Scripture. Now it is im- 
possible to persuade an adult savage that his gods do 
not exist; and he considers those who deny their existence 
to be ignorant foreigners, unacquainted with the divine 
constitution of his country. Hence he laughs in his 
sleeve at all that the missionaries say. But the primi- 
tive Christians believed in gods and goddesses, satyrs 
and nymphs, as implicitly as the pagans themselves. 
They did not deny, and they did not disbelieve, the 
miracles performed in pagan temples. They allowed that 
the gods had great power upon earth, but asserted that 
they would have it only for a time; that it ceased beyond 
the grave; that they were rebels; and that God was the 
rightful king. Here, then, were two classes of men whose 
intellects were precisely on the same level. Each had a 
theory, and the Christian theory was the better of the 
two. It had definite promises and threats; and without 
being too high for the vulgar comprehension, it reduced 


216 CHRISTIAN SUPERSTITIONS 


the scheme of the universe to order and harmony, resem- 
bling that of the great empire under which they lived. 
But to the philosophers of that period it was merely 
a new and noisy form of superstition. Experience has 
amply proved that minds of the highest order are some- 
times unable to shake off the ideas which they imbibed 
when they were children; but to those of whom we speak 
Christianity was offered when their powers of reflection 
were matured, and it was naturally rejected with con- 
tempt. They knew that the pagan gods did not exist. 
Was it likely that they would sit at the feet of those 
who still believed in them? They had long ago aban- 
doned the religious legends of their own country; they 
had shaken off the spell which Homer, with his splendid 
poetry, had laid upon their minds. Was it likely that 
they would believe in the old Arab traditions, or in these 
tales of a god who took upon him the semblance of a 
Jew, and suffered death upon the gallows for the re- 
demption of mankind? They had obtained, by means of 
intellectual research, a partial perception of the great 
truth, that events result from secondary laws. Was 
it likely that they would join a crew of devotees who 
prayed to God to make the wind blow this way or that 
-way, to give them a dinner, or to cure them of a pain? 
When the Tiber overflowed its banks, the Pagans declared 
that it was owing to the wrath of the gods against the 
Christians: the Christians retorted that it was owing to 
the wrath of God against the idolaters. To a man like 
Pliny, who studied the phenomena with his note-book 
in his hand, where was the difference between the two? 
In the Greek world Christianity became a system of 
metaphysics as abstract and abstruse as any son of 
Hellas could desire. But in the Latin world it was never 
the religion of a scholar and a gentleman. It was the 
creed of the uneducated people who flung themselves 
into it with passion. It was something which belonged 
to them and to them alone. They were not acquainted 


A RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE 217 


with Cicero or Seneca: they had never tasted intellectual 
delights, for the philosophers scorned to instruct the 
vulgar crowd. And now the vulgar crowd found teachers 
who interpreted to them the Jewish books, who com- 
posed for them a magnificent literature of sermons and 
epistles and controversial treatises, a literature of en- 
thusiasts and martyrs, written in blood and fire. The 
people had no share in the politics of the Empire; but 
now they had politics of their own. The lower orders 
were enfranchised; women and slaves were not excluded. 
The barbers gossipped theologically. Children played 
at church in the streets. The Christians were no longer 
citizens of Rome. God was their Emperor: Heaven was 
their fatherland. They despised the pleasures of this 
life; they were as emigrants gathered on the shore waiting 
for a wind to waft them to another world. They rendered 
unto Cesar the things that were Cesar’s, for so it was 
written they should do. They honoured the King, for 
such had been the teaching of St. Paul. They regarded 
the Emperor as God’s viceregent upon earth, and diso- 
beyed him only when his commands were contrary to 
those of God. But this limitation, which it was the busi- 
ness of the bishops to define, made the Christians a dan- 
gerous party in the state. The Emperor Constantine, 
whose title was unsound, entered into alliance with this 
powerful corporation. He made Christianity the re- 
ligion of the State, and the bishops peers of the realm. 

In the days of tribulation it had often been pre- 
dicted that when the Empire became Christian war would 
cease, and men would dwell in brotherhood together. 
The Christian religion united the slave and his master 
at the same table and in the same embrace. On the 
pavement of the Basilica men of all races and of all ranks 
knelt side by side. If any one were in sickness and 
affliction it was sufficient for him to declare himself a 
Christian: money was at once pressed into his hands: 
compassionate matrons hastened to his bedside. Even 


218 CHRISTIAN VIRTUE 


at the time when the Pagans regarded the new sect with 
most abhorrence, they were forced to exclaim, “See how 
these Christians love one another!” It was reasonable 
to suppose that the victory of this religion would be the 
victory of love and peace. But what was the actual re- 
sult? Shortly after the establishment of Christianity 
as a State religion there was uproar and dissension in 
every city of the Empire; then savage persecutions, 
bloody wars, until a Pagan historian could observe to the 
polished and intellectual coterie for whom alone he wrote, 
that now the hatred of the Christians against one another 
surpassed the fury of savage beasts against man. 

It is evident that the virtues exhibited by those 
who gallantly fight against desperate odds for an idea 
will not be invariably displayed by those who, when the 
idea is realised, enjoy the spoil. It is evident that bishops 
who possess large incomes and great authority, will not 
always possess the same qualities of mind as those spiri- 
tual peers who had no distinction to expect except that 
of being burnt alive. In all great movements of the 
-mind there can be but one heroic age, and the heroic 
age of Christianity was past. The Church became the 
State concubine; Christianity lost its democratic char- 
acter. The bishops who should have been the tribunes 
of the people became the creatures of the Crown. Their 
lives were not always of the most creditable kind; but 
their virtues were perhaps more injurious to society than 
their vices. The mischief was done, not so much by those 
who intrigued for places and rioted on tithes at Con- 
stantinople, as by those who often with the best inten- 
tions endeavoured to make all men think alike “accord- 
ing to the law.” 

It was the Christian theory that God was a king, 
and that he enacted laws for the government of men 
on earth. Those laws were contained in the Jewish 
books, but some of them had been repealed, and some of 
them were exceedingly obscure. Some were to be under- 


CLERGY AND LAITY =~ 219 


stood in a literal sense: others were only metaphorical. 
Many cases might arise to which no text or precept 
could be with any degree of certainty applied. What 
then was to be done? How was God’s will to be ascer- 
tained? The early Christians were taught that by means 
of prayer and faith their questions would be answered, 
their difficulties would be solved. They must pray 
earnestly to God for help: and the ideas which came into 
their heads, after prayer, would be emanations from the 
Holy Ghost. 

In the first age of Christianity the church was a 
republic. There was no distinction between clergy- 
men and laymen. Each member of the congregation 
had a right to preach, and each consulted God on his 
own account. The spritus privatus everywhere pre- 
vailed. A cemmittee of presbyters or elders with a 
bishop or chairman, administered the affairs of the com- 
munity. 

The second period was marked by an important 
change. The bishops and presbyters, though still elected 
by the congregation, had begun to monopolise the pul- 
pit; the distinction of clergy and laity was already made. 
The bishops of various churches met together at councils 
or synods to discuss questions of discipline and dogma, 
and to pass laws; but they went as representatives of 
their respective congregations. 

In the third period the change was more important 
still. The congregation might now be appropriately 
termed a flock: the spiritus privatus was extinct; the 
priests were possessed of traditions which they did not 
impart to the laymen; the Water of Life was kept in a 
sealed vessel; there was no salvation outside the Church: 
no man could have God for a father unless he had also 
the Church for a mother, as even Bossuet long afterwards 
declared; excommunication was a sentence of eternal 
death. Henceforth disputes were only between bishops 
and bishops, the laymen following their spiritual leaders, 


220 FATHER AND SON 


and often using material weapons on their behalf. In 
the synods the bishops now met as princes of their con- 
gregations, and under the influence of the Holy Ghost 
(spiritu sancto suggerente) issued imperial decrees. The 
penalties inflicted were of the most terrible nature to 
those who believed that hell-fire and purgatory were at 
the disposal of the priesthood; while those who enter- 
tained doubts upon the subject allowed themselves to be 
cursed and damned with equanimity. But when the 
Church became united with the State, the secular arm 
was at its disposal, and was vigorously used. 

The bishops were all of them ignorant and supersti- 
tious men, but they could not all of them think alike. 
And as if to insure dissent, they proceeded to define 
that which had never existed, and which, if it had 
existed, could never be defined. They described the 
topography of heaven. They dissected the godhead, 
and expounded the immaculate conception, giving lec- 
tures on celestial impregnations and miraculous obstet- 
rics. They not only said that 3 was 1, and that 1 was 3: 
they professed to explain how that curious arithmetic 
combination had been brought about. The indivisible 
had been divided, and yet was not divided: it was divis- 
ible, and yet it was indivisible ; black was white, and 
white was black; and yet there were not two colours 
but one colour; and whoever did not believe it would 
be damned. In the midst of all this subtle stuff, the 
dregs and rinsings of the Platonic school, Arius thun- 
dered out the common-sense but heretical assertion, that 
the Father had existed before the Son. Two great 
parties were at once formed. A council of bishops was 
convened at Nice to consult the Holy Ghost. The chair 
was taken by a man who wore a wig of many colours, 
and a silken robe embroidered with golden thread. This 
was Constantine the Great, Patron of Christianity, Nero 
of the Bosphorus, murderer of his wife and son. The 
discussion was noisy and abusive, and the Arians lost the 


THE HERETICS 221 


day. Yet the matter did not end there. Constantius 
took up the Arian side. Arian missionaries converted 
the Vandals and the Goths. Other emperors took up 
the Catholics, and they converted the Franks. The 
court was divided by spiritual eunuchs and theological 
intrigues: the provinces were laid waste by theological 
wars, which lasted three hundred years. What a world 
of woe and desolation: what a deluge of blood, because 
the Greeks had a taste for metaphysics! 

The Arian difference did not stand alone; every prov- 
ince had its own schism. Caste sympathy induced the 
Emperors to protect the pagan aristocracy from the fury 
of the bishops; but the heretics belonged chiefly to the 
subject nationalities. The Nestorians were men of the 
Semitic race: the Jacobites were Egyptians; the Dona- 
tists were Berbers. Of such a nature was the treatment 
which these people received, that they were ready at any 
time to join the enemies of the Empire, whoever they 
might be. Difference of nationality occasioned difference 
in mode of thought. Difference in mode of thought oc- 
casioned difference in religious creed. Difference in reli- 
gious creed occasioned controversy, riots and persecu- 
tion. Persecution intensified distinctions of nationality. 
Such, then, was the state of religion in the Grecian 
world. In the West the Church, overwhelmed by the 
barbarians, was displaying virtues in adversity, and was 
laying the foundations of a majestic kingdom. But as 
for the East, Christianity had lived in vain. In Con- 
stantinople and in Greece it had done no good. In Asia, 
Barbary, and Egypt it had done harm. Its peace was 
apathy: its activity was war. Instead of healing the 
old wounds of conquest, it opened them afresh. It was 
not enough that the peasants of the ancient race, once 
masters of the soil, should be crushed with taxes; a new 
instrument of torture was invented; their priests were 
taken from them; their altars were overthrown. But the 
day of vengeance was at hand. Soon they would en- 


222 THE BYZANTINES AND THE PERSIANS 


joy, under rulers of a different religion, but of the same 
race, that freedom of the conscience which a Christian 
government refused. 

The Byzantine Empire in the seventh century in- 
cluded Greece and the islands, with a part of Italy. In 
Asia and Africa its possessions were those of the Turkish 
empire before the cession of Algiers. There was a Greek 
viceroy of Egypt: there were Greek governors in Egypt 
and Asia Minor, Carthage, and Cyrene. The capital 
was fed with Egyptian corn, and enriched by silken 
manufactures: for two Nestorian monks had brought 
the eggs of the silkworm from China in hollow canes. 
These eggs had been hatched under lukewarm dung, and 
the culture of the cocoon had been established for the 
first time on European soil. The eastern boundary 
of the Empire was sometimes the Tigris, sometimes 
the Euphrates; the land of Mesopotamia, which lay 
between the rivers, was the subject of continual war 
between the Byzantines and the Persians. 

Alexander the Great had not been long dead before 
the Parthians, a race of hardy mountaineers, occupied 
the lands to the east of the Euphrates, made them- 
selves famous in their wars with Rome, and established 
a wide empire. In the third century it was broken up 
into petty principalities, and a private citizen who 
claimed to be heir-at-law of the old Persian kings headed 
a party, seized the crown, restored the Zoroastrian reli- 
gion, and raised the Empire to a state of power and mag- 
nificence scarcely inferior to that of the Great Kings. 
But the Greeks were still in Asia-Minor and Egypt; and 
it became the hereditary ambition of the Persians to 
drive them back into their own country. In the seventh 
century Chosroes the Second accomplished this idea, 
and restored the frontiers of Cambyses and the first 
Darius. He conquered Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. 
He carried his arms to Cyrene, and extinguished the last 
glimmer of culture in that ancient colony. Heraclius, the 


ARABIA _ 923 


Byzantine Emperor, was in despair. While the Persians 
overran his provinces in Asia a horde of Cossacks 
threatened him in Europe. Constantinople, he feared, 
would soon be surrounded, and it already suffered famine 
from the loss of Egypt, as Rome had formerly suffered 
when the Vandals plundered it of Africa. He deter- 
mined to migrate to Carthage, and had already packed 
up, when the Patriarch persuaded him to change his 
mind. He obtained peace from Persia by sending earth 
and water in the old style, and by promising to pay as 
tribute a thousand talents of gold, a thousand talents 
of silver, a thousand silk robes, a thousand horses, and 
a thousand virgins. But instead of collecting these com- 
modities he collected an army, and suddenly dashed into 
the heart of Persia. Chosroes recalled his troops from 
the newly conquered lands, but was defeated by the 
Greeks, and was in his turn compelled to sue for igno- 
minious peace. In the midst of the triumphs which 
Heraclius celebrated at Constantinople and Jerusalem, 
an obscure town on the confines of Syria was pillaged 
by a band of Arab horsemen, who cut in pieces some 
troops which advanced to its relief. This appeared a 
trifling event, but it was the commencement of a mighty 
revolution. In the last eight years of his reign Heraclius 
lost to the Saracens the provinces which he had recovered 
from the Persians. 

The peninsula of Arabia is almost as large as Hindo- 
stan, but does not contain a single navigable river. It 
is for the most part a sterile table-land furrowed by 
channels which in winter roar with violent and muddy 
streams, and which in summer are completely dry. In 
these stream-beds at little depth below the surface 
there is sometimes a stratum of water which, breaking 
out here and there into springs, creates a habitable island 
in the waste. Such a fruitful wadi or oasis is sometimes 
extensive enough to form a town: and each town is in 
itself a kingdom. This stony green-spotted land was 


224 MERCHANT PRINCES 


divided into Arabia Petrea on the north, and Arabia 
Deserta on the south. The north supplied Constanti- 
nople, and the south supplied Persia with mercenary 
troops; the leaders on receiving their pay established 
courts at home, and rendered homage to their imperial 
masters. The princes of Arabia Deserta ruled in the 
name of the Chosroes. The princes of Arabia Petrea 
were proud to be called the lieutenants of the Cesars. 

In the south-west corner of the peninsula there is a 
range of hills sufficiently high to intercept the passing 
clouds and rain them down as streams to the Indian 
Ocean and the Red Sea. This was the land of Yemen 
or Sabsea, renowned for its groves of frankincense and 
for the wealth of its merchant kings. Its forests in an- 
cient times were inhabited by squalid negro tribes who 
lived on platforms in the trees, and whose savage stupor 
was ascribed to the drowsy influence of the scented air. 
The country was afterwards colonised by men of the 
Arab race, who built ships and established factories on 
the East Coast of Africa, on the coast of Malabar, and 
in the island of Ceylon. They did not navigate the Red 
Sea, but despatched the India goods, the African ivory 
and gold dust, and their own fragrant produce by camel 
caravan to Egypt or to Petra, a great market city in the 
north. 

The Pharoahs and the Persian kings did not inter- 
fere with the merchant princes of Yemen. In the days 
of the Ptolemies a few Greek ships made the Indian 
voyage, but could not compete with the Arabs who 
had so long been established in the trade. But the 
Roman occupation of Alexandria ruined them com- 
pletely. The just and moderate government of Augustus, 
and the demand for Oriental luxuries at Rome excited 
the enterprise of the Alexandrine traders, and a Greek 
named Hippalus made a remarkable discovery. He ob- 
served that the winds or monsoons of the Indian Ocean 


regularly blew during six months from east to west, and — 





THE LAND OF REFUGE 225 


six months from west to east. He was bold enough to 
do what the Pheenicians themselves had never done. 
He left the land, and sailed right across the ocean to the 
Indian shore with one monsoon, returning with the next 
to the mouth of the Red Sea. By means of this ocean 
route the India voyage could be made in half the time, 
the goods were thereby cheapened, the demand was 
thereby increased, the India Ocean was covered with 
Greek vessels, a commercial revolution was created, the 
coasting and caravan trade of the Arabs came to an 
end, the Romans destroyed Aden, and Yemen withered 
up and remained independent only because it was ob- 
scure. 

Arabia had always been a land of refuge; for in 
its terrible deserts security might always be found. To 
Arabia had fled the Priests of the Sun after the victories 
of Alexander and the restoration of Babylonian idolatry. 
To Arabia had fled thousands of Jews after the second 
destruction of Jerusalem. To Arabia had fled thousands 
of Christians who had been persecuted by pagan, and 
still more by Christian emperors. The land was divided 
among independent princes: many of them were Chris- 
tians and many of them were Jews. There is nothing 
more conducive to an enlightened scepticism, and its at- 
tendant spirit, toleration, than the spectacle of various 
religious creeds, each maintained by intelligent and pious 
men. A king of Arabia Felix, in the fourth century, re- 
ceived an embassy from the Byzantine emperor, with 
a request that Christians might be allowed to settle in 
his kingdom, and also that he would make Christianity 
the religion of the State. He assented to the first pro- 
position; with reference to the second, he replied, “I 
reign over men’s bodies, not over their opinions. I exact 
from my subjects obedience to the government; as to 
their religious doctrine, the judge of that is the great 
Creator.” 

But it came to pass that a king of the Jewish per- 


226 ABYSSINIA 


suasion succeeded to the throne: he persecuted his 
Christian subjects, and made war on Christian kings, 
burning houses, men, and gospels, wherever he could 
find them. A Christian Arab made his escape, tra- 
velled to Constantinople, and holding up a charred 
testament before the throne, demanded help in the name 
of the Redeemer. The emperor at once prepared for war, 
and despatched an envoy to his faithful ally, the Negus 
of Abyssinia. 

The old kingdom of Ethiopia had escaped Cambyses 
and Alexander, and had lost its independence to the 
Ptolemies only for a time. The Romans made an 
Abyssinian expedition with complete success, but with- 
drew from the savage country in disdain. Ethiopia 
was left to its own devices, which soon became of an 
Africanizing nature. The priests kept the king shut 
up in his palace, and when it suited their convenience, 
sent him word in the African style, that he must be 
tired, and that it would be good for him to sleep; 
upon which he migrated to the lower world, with his 
favourite wives and slaves. But there was once a 
king named Ergamenes, who had improved his mind 
by the study of Greek philosophy, and who, when he 
received the message of the priests, soon gave them a 
proof that they were quite mistaken, and that so far 
from being sleepy, he was wide awake. He ordered 
them to collect in the Golden Chapel, and then, march- 
ing in with his guards, he put them all to death. From 
that time Abyssinia became a military kingdom. As 
the princes of Numidia had used elephants after the 
destruction of the Carthaginian republic, so the Abys- 
sinians used them in pageantry and war long after the 
days of the Ptolemies, who had first shown them how 
the huge beasts might be entrapped. Hindoos were 
probably employed by the Ptolemies, as they were by the 
Carthaginians, for the management of the elephantine 
stud. In the fourth century two shipwrecked Christians 


— 


a 


EPISCOPAL SALIVA 227 


converted the king and his people to the new religion 
—a beneficial event, for thus they were brought into con- 
nection with the Roman empire. The patriarch of 
Alexandria was the Abyssinian pope, as he is at the 
present day; and during all these years he has never 
ceased to send them their Aboona or Archbishop. This 
ecclesiastic is regarded with much reverence; he costs 
six thousand dollars; he is never allowed to smoke; and, 
by way of blessing, he spits upon his congregation, who 
believe that the episcopal virtue resides in the saliva, and 
not, as we think, in the fingers’ ends. 

Abyssinia had still its ancient sea-port in Annesley 
Bay, and sent trading vessels to the India coast. The 
Byzantine emperor having made his proposals through 
the Patriarch of Alexandria, and having received from 
the Negus a favorable reply, despatched a fieet of trans- 
ports down the Red Sea; the king filled them with his 
brigand troops; Yemen was invaded and subdued, and 
now it was the Christians who began to persecute. An- 
other Arab prince ran off for help, and he went to the 
Persian king, who at first refused to take the country 
as a gift, saying it was too distant and too poor. How- 
ever, at last he ordered the prisons to be opened, and 
placed all the able-bodied convicts they contained at 
the disposal of the prince. The Abyssinians were driven 
out, but they returned and reconquered the land. Chos- 
roes then sent a regular army with orders to kill all the 
men with black skins and curly hair. Thus Yemen be- 
came a Persian province; and no less than three great 
religions, that of Zoroaster, that of Moses, and that of 
Jesus, were represented in Arabia. 

Midway between Yemen and Egypt is a sandy valley 
two miles in length, surrounded on all sides by naked 
hills. No gardens or fields are to be seen; no trees, ex- 
cept some low brushwood and the acacia of the desert. 
On all sides are barren and sunburnt rocks. But in the 
midst of this valley is a wonderful well. It is not that 


228 THE WONDERFUL WELL 


the water is unusually cool and sweet; conhoisseurs pro- 
nounce it “heavy” to the taste; but it affords an inex- 
haustible supply. No matter what quantity may be 
drawn up, the water in the well remains always at the 
same height. It is probably fed by a perennial stream 
below. 

This valley, on account of its well, was made the 
halting-place of the India caravans, and there the goods 
changed carriers—the South delivered them over to the 
North. As the North and South were frequently at war, 
the valley was hallowed with solemn oaths for the pro- 
tection of the trade. A sanctuary was established; the 
well Zemzem became sacred; its fame spread; it was 
visited from all parts of the land by the diseased and the 
devout. The tents of the valley tribe became a city of 
importance, enriched by the custom receipts, dues of pro- 
tection, and the carrier hire of the caravans. When the 
navigation of the Red Sea put an end to the carrying 
trade by land, the city was deserted; its inhabitants 
returned to the wandering Bedouin life. In the fifth 
century, however, it was restored by an enterprising man, 
and the shrine was rebuilt. Mecca was no longer a 
wealthy town; it was no longer situated on one of the 
highways of the world; but it manufactured a celebrated 
leather, and sent out two caravans a-year—one to 
Syria, and one to Abyssinia. Some of the Meccans 
were rich men: Byzantine gold pieces and Persian cop- 
per coins circulated in abundance; the ladies dressed 
themselves in silk, had Chinese looking-glasses, wore 
shoes of perfumed leather, and made themselves odorous 
of musk. It was the fame of Mecca as a holy place 
which brought this wealth into the town. The citi- 
zens lived upon the pilgrims. However, they esteemed 
it a pious duty to give hospitality if it was required to 
the ‘‘guests of God, who came from distant cities on their 
lean and jaded camels, fatigued and harassed with the 
dirt and squalor of the way.”’ The poor pilgrims were 


THE TRUCE OF GOD 229 


provided during six days with pottage of meat and bread 
and dates; leather cisterns filled with water were also 
placed at their disposal. 

During four months of the year there was a Truce 
of God, and the Arab tribes, suspending their hostilities, 
journeyed towards Mecca. As soon as they entered the 
Sacred Valley they put on their palmers’ weeds, pro- 
ceeded at once to the Caaba, or house of God, walked 
round it naked seven times, kissed the black stone, and 
drunk of the waters of the famous well. Then a kind 
of Eisteddfod was held. The young men combated 
in martial games, poems were recited, and those which 
gained the prize were copied with illuminated characters, 
and hung up on the Caaba before the golden-plated 
door. 

There was no regular government in the holy city, 
no laws that could be enforced, no compulsory courts 
of justice, and no public treasury. The city was com- 
posed of several families of clans belonging to the tribe 
of the Corayshites, by whom New Mecca had been 
founded. Each family inhabited a cluster of houses sur- 
rounding a courtyard and well, the whole enclosed by 
solid walls. Each family was able to go to war, and to 
sustain a siege. If a murder was committed, the injured 
family took the law into its own hands; sometimes it 
would accept a pecuniary compensation—there was a 
regular tariff—but more frequently the money was re- 
fused. They had a belief, that if blood was not avenged 
by blood, a small winged insect issued from the skull of 
the murdered person, and fled screeching through the 
sky. It was also a point of honour on the part of the 
guilty clan to protect the murderer, and to adopt his 
cause. Thus blood feuds rose easily, and died hard. 

The head of the family was a despot, and enjoyed 
the power of life and death over the members of his own 
house. But he had also severe responsibilities. It was 
his duty to protect those who dwelt within the circle 


230 MECCA 


of his yard; all its inmates called him “Father;” to all 
of them he owed the duties of a parent. If his son was 
little better than a slave, on the other hand his slave 
was almost equal to a son. It sometimes happened 
that masterless men, travellers, or outcasts, required 
his protection. If it was granted, the stranger entered 
the family, and the father was accountable for his debts, 
delicts, and torts. The body of the delinquent might 
be tendered in lieu of fine or feud, but this practice was 
condemned by public opinion; and in all semi-savage 
communities, public opinion has considerable power. 

There was a town-hall, in which councils were held 
to discuss questions relating to the common welfare of 
the federated families; but the minority were not bound 
by the voice of the majority. If, for instance, it was 
decided to make war, a single family would hold aloof. 
In this town-hall marriages were celebrated, circumci- 
sions were performed, and young girls were invested with 
the dress of womanhood. It was the starting place of 
the militia and the caravans. It was near the Caaba, 
and opened towards it: in Mecca the church was closely 
united to the state. 

Throughout all time, Mecca had preserved its inde- 
pendence and its religion; the ancient idolatry had there 
a sacred home. The Meccans recognised a single creator 
Allah Taala, the Most High God, whom Abraham, and 
others before Abraham, had adored. But they believed 
that the stars were live beings, daughters of the deity, 
who acted as intercessors on behalf of men; and to pro- 
pitiate their favour, idols were made to represent them. 
Within the Caaba, or around it, were also images of 
foreign deities and of celebrated men; a picture of Mary 
with the child Jesus in her lap was painted on a column, 
and a portrait of Abraham, with a bundle of divining 
arrows in his hands, upon the wall. 

Among the Meccans, there were many who regarded 
that idolatry with abhorrence and contempt; yet, to 


MAHOMET 231 


that idolatry their town owed all that it possessed, its 
wealth and its glory, which extended round a crescent 
of a thousand miles. They were therefore obliged, as 
good citizens, to content themselves with seeking a 
simpler religion for themselves, and those who did pro- 
test against the Caaba gods were persuaded to silence 
by their families, or, if they would not be silent, were 
banished from the town, under penalty of death if they 
returned. 

But there rose up a man whose convictions were 
too strong to be hushed by the love of family or to be 
quelled by the fear of death. Partly owing to his age 
and dignified position, and unblemished name, partly 
owing to the chivalrous nature of his Patriarch or 
Patron, he was protected against his enemies, his life 
was saved. Had there been a government at Mecca, 
he would unquestionably have been put to death, and 
as it was, he narrowly escaped. 

Mahomet was a poor lad subject to a nervous disease 
which made him at first unfit for anything except the 
despised occupation of the shepherd. When he grew 
up he became a commercial traveller, acted as agent 
for a rich widow, twenty-five years older than himself, 
and obtained her hand. They lived happily together 
for many years; they were both of them exceedingly 
religious people, and in the Rhamadan, a month held 
sacred by the ancient Arabs, they used to live in a 
cave outside the town, passing the time in prayer and 
meditation. 

The disease of his childhood returned upon him in 
his middle age; it affected his mind in a strange manner, 
and produced illusions on his senses. He thought that 
he was haunted, that his body was the house of an 
evil spirit. “I see a light,” he said to his wife, “and I 
hear a sound. I fear that I am one of the possessed.” 
This idea was most distressing to a pious man. He 
became pale and haggard, he wandered about on the hill 


932 RECEIVES HIS MISSION 


near Mecca, crying out to God for help. More than 
once he drew near the edge of a cliff, and was tempted 
to hurl himself down, and so put an end to his misery 
at once. 

And then a new idea possessed his mind. He lived 
much in the open air, gazing on the stars, watching 
the dry ground grow green beneath the gentle rain, sur- 
veying the firmly rooted mountains, and the broad ex- 
panded plain; he pondered also on the religious legends 
of the Jews, which he had heard related on his journeys, 
at noonday beneath the palm tree by the well mouth, at 
night by the camp fire; and as he looked and thought, 
the darkness was dispelled, the clouds dispersed, and the 
vision of God in solitary grandeur rose up within his 
mind; and there came upon him an impulse to speak 
of God, there came upon him a belief that he was a 
messenger of God sent on earth to restore the religion 
of Abraham, which the Pagan Arabs had polluted with 
their idolatry, the Christians in making Jesus a divinity, 
the Jews in corrupting their holy books. 

In the brain of a poet stanzas will sometimes arise 
fully formed without a conscious effort of the will, as 
once happened to Coleridge in a dream; and so into 
Mahomet’s half-dreaming mind there flew golden-winged 
verses, echoing to one another in harmonious sound. At 
the same time he heard a Voice; and sometimes he saw 
a human figure; and sometimes he felt a noise in his 
ears like the tinkling of bells, or a low deep hum, as if 
bees were swarming round his head. At this period of 
his life, every chapter of the Koran was delivered ‘in 
throes of pain. The paroxysm was preceded by a de- 
pression of spirits; his face became clouded; his extremi- 
ties turned cold; he shook like a man in an ague, and 
called for a covering. His face assumed an expression 
horrible to see; the vein between his eyebrows became 
distended; his eyes were fixed; his head moved to and 
fro, as if he was conversing; and then he gave forth the 


PREACHES 233 


oracle or sudra. Sometimes he would fall, like a man 
intoxicated, to the ground; but the ordinary conclusion 
of the fit was a profuse perspiration, by which he ap- 
peared to be relieved. His sufferings were at times 
unusually severe; he used often to speak of the three 
terrific sudras which had given him grey hairs. 

His friends were alarmed at his state of mind. Some 
ascribed it to the eccentricities of an evil spirit; others 
declared that he was possessed of an evil spirit; others 
said he was insane. When he began to preach against 
the idols of the Caaba, the practice of female infanti- 
cide, and other evil customs of the town; when he 
declared that there was no divine being but God, and 
that he was the messenger of God; when he related 
the ancient legends of the prophets which he said had 
been told him by the angel Gabriel, there was a gen- 
eral outburst of merriment and scorn. They said he 
had picked it all up from a Christian who kept a 
jeweller’s shop in the town. They requested him to 
perform miracles; the poets composed comic ballads, 
which the people sang when he began to preach; the 
women pointed at him with the finger; it became an 
amusement of the children to pelt Mahomet. This was 
perhaps the hardest season of his life: ridicule is the 
most terrible of all weapons. But his wife encouraged 
him to persevere, and so did the Voice, which came to 
him and sang: “By the brightness of the morn that 
rises, and by the darkness of the night that descends, 
thy God hath not forsaken thee, Mahomet. For know 
that there is a life beyond the grave, and it will be 
better for thee than thy present life; and thy Lord will 
give thee a rich reward. Did he not find thee an orphan, 
and did he not care for thee? Did he not find thee wan- 
dering in error, and hath he not guided thee to truth? 
Did he not find thee needy, and hath he not enriched 
thee? Wherefore oppress not the orphan, neither re- 
pulse the beggar, but declare the goodness of the Lord.” 


234 THE PRICE OF BLOOD 


This Voice was the echo of Mahomet’s conscience, 
and the expression of his ideas. Owing to his peculiar 
constitution, his thoughts became audible as soon as 
they became intense. So long as his mind remained 
pure, the Voice was that of a good angel; when after- 
wards guilty wishes entered his heart, the voice became 
that of Mephistopheles. 

Mahomet’s family did not accept his mission; his 
converts were at first chiefly made among the slaves. 
But soon these converts became so numerous among 
all classes, that the Meccans ceased to ridicule Ma- 
homet, and began to hate him. Nor did he attempt to 
ingratiate himself in their affections. “He called the 
living fools, the dead denizens of hell-fire.” The heads 
of families took counsel together. They went to Abu 
Talib, the Patriarch of the house to which Mahomet 
belonged, and offered the price of blood, and then double 
the price of blood, and then a stalwart young man for 
Mahomet’s life, and then being always refused, went. 
off, declaring that there would be war. Abu Talib ad- 
jured Mahomet not to ruin the family. The prophet’s 
lip quivered: he burst into tears; but he said he must 
go on. Abu Talib hinted that his protection might be 
withdrawn. Then Mahomet declared, that if the sun 
came down on his right hand, and the moon on his left, 
he would not swerve from the work which God had 
given him to do. Abu Talib, finding him inflexible, as- 
sured him that his protection should never be with- 
drawn. In the meantime, the patriarchs returned and 
said, “What is it that you want Mahomet? Do you wish 
for riches? we will make you rich. Do you wish for 
honour? we will make you the mayor of the town.” Ma- 
homet replied with a chapter of the Koran. They then 
assembled in the town-hall, and entered into a solemn 
league and covenant, to keep apart from the family of 
Abu Talib. It was sent to Coventry. None would buy 
with them nor sell with them, eat with them, nor drink 


SENT TO COVENTRY 235 


with them. This lasted for three years; but when as 
people passed by the house they heard the cries of the 
starving children from behind the walls, they relented, 
and sold them grain. There was one member of the 
family Abu Laheb, who withdrew from it at that june- 
ture, and became Mahomet’s most inveterate foe. 

Each family agreed also to punish its own Mahomet- 
ans. Many were exposed to the glow of the mid-day 
sun on the scorching gravel outside the town, and to 
the torments of thirst. A mulatto slave was tortured 
by a great stone being placed on his chest, during which 
he cried out continually, “There is only one God! 
There is only one God!” Mahomet recommended his 
disciples to escape to Abyssinia, ‘fa land of righteous- 
ness, a land where none were wronged.” ‘They were 
kindly received by the Negus, who refused to give them 
up in spite of the envoys with presents of red leather, 
who were sent to him from Mecca with that request. 

During the period of the sacred month, Mahomet used 
often to visit the encampments of the pilgrims outside 
the town. He announced to them his mission, he 
preached on the unity of God, and on the terrors of the 
judgment-day. “God has no daughters,” said he, “for 
how can he have daughters when he has no spouse? He 
begetteth not, neither is he begotten. There is none but 
he. O beware ye idolators of the time that is to come, 
when the sun shall be folded up, when the stars shall 
fall, when the mountains shall be made to pass away, 
when the children’s hair shall grow white with anguish, 
when souls like locust swarms shall rise from their 
graves, when the girl who hath been buried alive shall 
be asked for what crime she was puf to death, when 
the books shall be laid open, when every soul shall know 
what it hath wrought. O the striking! the striking! 
when men shall be scattered as moths in the wind. 
And then Allah shall ery to Hell, Art thou filled full? 
And Hell shall ery to Allah, More, give me more!” 


236 THE HEGIRA 


But there followed him everywhere a squint-eyed 
man, fat, with flowing locks on both sides of his head, 
and clothed in raiment of fine Aden stuff. When Ma- 
homet had finished his sermon, he would say, “This 
fellow’s object is to draw you away from the gods to his 
fanciful ideas; wherefore follow him not, O my brothers, 
neither listen to him.” And who should this be but 
his uncle, Abu Laheb! Whereupon the strangers would 
reply, Your own kinsmen ought to know you best. Why 
do they not believe you, if what you say is true? In 
return for these kind offices, Mahomet promised his 
uncle that he should go down to be burned in flaming 
fire, and that his wife should go too, bearing a load 
of wood, with a cord of twisted palm fibres round her 
neck. 

And now two great sorrows fell upon Mahomet. He 
lost almost at the same time his beloved wife, and the 
noble-hearted parent of his clan. The successor of Abu 
Talib continued the protection, yet Mahomet felt in- 
secure. His religion also made but small progress. The 
fact is that he failed at Mecca as Jesus had failed at 
Jerusalem. He had made a few ardent disciples, who 
spent the day at his feet, or in reading snatches of the 
Koran scrawled on date leaves, shoulder blades of sheep, 
camel bones, scraps of parchment, or tablets of smooth 
white stone. But he had not so much as shaken the 
ruling idolatry, which was firmly based on custom and 
self-interest. No doubt his disciples would in course of 
time have diffused his religion throughout Arabia, 
Islam was formed; Islam was alive; but Mahomet him- 
self would never have witnessed its triumph had it not 
been for a curious accident which now occurred. The 
Arabs belonging to that city, which was afterwards 
called Medina, had conquered a tribe of Jews. These 
had consoled themselves for the bitterness of their de- | 
feat by declaring that a great prophet, the Messiah, 
would soon appear, and would avenge them upon all 


THE GENTLE PROPHET 237 


their foes. The Arabs believed them and trembled, for 
they stood in great dread of the book which the Jews 
possessed, and which they supposed to be a magical 
composition. So when certain pilgrims from Medina 
heard Mahomet announce that he was a messenger from 
God, they took it for granted that he was the man, and 
determined to steal a march upon the Jews by securing 
him for themselves. At their request he sent a mis- 
sionary to Medina; the townsmen were converted, and 
invited him to come and live among them. In a dark 
ravine near Mecca, at the midnight hour, his Patriarch 
or Father delivered him solemnly into their hands. Ma- 
homet was now no longer a citizen of Mecca; he was no 
longer “protected;’”’ he had changed his nationality; and 
he was hunted like a deer before he arrived safely in 
his new home. 

Had Mahomet been killed in that celebrated flight, 
he would have been classed by historians among the 
glorious martyrs and the gentle saints. His character 
before the Hegira resembled the character of Jesus. In 
both of them we find the same sublime insanity, com- 
pounded of loyalty to God, love for man, and inordinate 
self-conceit; both subject to savage fits of wrath, and 
having no weapons but their tongues, consigning souls by 
wholesale to hell-fire. Both also humbling themselves 
before God, preaching the religion of the heart, leading 
pure, unblemished lives, devoting themselves to a noble 
cause, uttering maxims of charity and love at strange 
variance with their occasional invectives. Of the life 
of Jesus it is needless to speak: if he had any vices 
they have not been recorded. But the conduct of Ma- 
homet at Mecca was apparently not less pure. He was 
married to an old woman; polygamy was a custom of 
the land; his passions were strong, as was afterwards 
too plainly shown; yet he did not take a second wife as 
long as his dear Khadijah was alive. He never fre- 
quented the wine-shop, or looked at the dancing-girls, 


238 THE GOSPEL OF THE SWORD 


or talked abroad in the bazaars. He was more modest 
than a virgin behind the curtain. When he met children 
he would stop and pat their cheeks; he followed the bier 
that passed him in the street; he visited the sick; he was 
kind to his inferiors; he would accept the invitation of a 
slave to dinner; he was never the first to withdraw his 
hand when he shook hands; he was humble, gentle, and 
kind; he waited always on himself, mending his own 
clothes, milking his own goats; he never struck any one 
in his life. When once asked to curse some one, he said, 
“IT have not been sent to curse, but to be a mercy to 
mankind.” He reproached himself in the Koran for 
having behaved unkindly to a beggar, and so immor- 
talised his own offence. He issued a text, “Use no vio- 
lence in religion.” 

But this text, with many others, he afterwards ex- 
punged. When he arrived at Medina he found himself 
at the head of a small army, and he began to publish 
his gospel of the sword. Henceforth we may admire the 
statesman or the general; the prophet is no more. It 
will hence be inferred that Mahomet was hypocritical, 
or at least inconstant. But he was constant through- 
out his life to the one object which he had in view, the 
spread of his religion.. At Mecca it could best be spread 
by means of the gentle virtues; he therefore ordered his 
disciples to abstain from violence which would only do 
them harm. At Medina he saw that the Caaba idolatry 
could not be destroyed except by force: he therefore 
felt it his duty to make use of force. He obeyed his 
conscience both at Mecca and Medina; for the con- 
sclence is merely an organ of the intellect, and is altered, 
improved, or vitiated, according to the education which 
it receives and the incidents which act upon it. And 
now, Mahomet’s glory expanded, and at the same time 
his virtue declined. He broke the Truce of God: he 
was not always true to his plighted word. As Moses 
forbade the Israelites to marry with the Pagans, and 


ACHIEVEMENTS OF MAHOMET 239 


then took unto himself an Ethiopian wife, so Mahomet 
broke his own marriage laws, commencing the career of 
a voluptuary at fifty years of age. His Koran sudras 
were now Official manifestoes, legal regulations, deliv- 
ered in’an extravagant and stilted style, differing much 
from that of his fervid oracles at Mecca. But what- 
ever may have been his private defects, when we regard 
him as a ruler and lawgiver, we can only wonder and 
admire. He established for the first time in history a 
United Arabia. In the moral life of his countrymen he 
effected a remarkable reform. He abolished drunken- 
ness and gambling, vices to which the Arabs had been 
specially addicted. He abolished the practice of in- 
fanticide, and also succeeded in rendering its memory 
detestable. It is said that Oumar, the fierce apostle of 
Islam, shed but one tear in his life, and that was when 
he remembered how, in the Days of Darkness, his child 
had beat the dust off his beard with her little hand as 
he was laying her in the grave. Polygamy and slavery 
he did not prohibit; but whatever laws he made re- 
specting women and slaves were made with the view of 
improving their condition. He removed that facility of 
divorce by means of which an Arab could at any time 
repudiate his wife: he enacted that no Moslem should 
be made a slave, that the children of a slave girl by 
her master should be free. Instead of repining that 
Mahomet did no more, we have reason to be aston- 
ished that he did so much. His career is the best. 
example that can be given of the influence of the In- 
dividual in human history. That single man created 
the glory of his nation and spread his language over 
half the earth. The words which he preached to jeering 
crowds twelve hundred years ago are now being studied 
by scholars or by devotees in London and Paris and 
Berlin; in Mecca, where he laboured, in Medina, where 
died; in Constantinople, in Cairo, in Fez, in Timbuctoo, 
in Jerusalem, in Damascus, in Bassora, in Baghdad, in 


240 EMPIRE OF THE CALIPHS 


Bokhara, in Cabul, in Calcutta, in Pekin; in the steppes 
of Central Asia, in the islands of the Indian Archi- 
pelago, in lands which are as yet unmarked upon our 
maps, in the oases of thirsty deserts, in obscure villages 
situated by unknown streams. It was Mahomet who 
did all this; for he uttered the book which carried the 
language; and he prepared the army which carried the 
book. His disciples and successors were not mad 
fanatics but resolute and sagacious men, who made 
shrewd friendship with the malcontent Christians among 
the Greeks and with the persecuted Jews in Spain, and 
who in a few years created an empire which extended 
from the Pyrenees to the Hindoo Koosh. 

This empire, it is true, was soon divided, and soon 
became weak in all its parts. The Arabs could con- 
quer, but they could not govern. Separate sovereignties 
or caliphates were established ‘in Babylonia, Egypt, and 
Spain; while provinces, such as Morocco or Bokhara, 
frequently obtained independence by rebellion. It is 
needless to describe at length the history of the caliphs 
and their successors; it is only the twice-told tales of 
the Euphrates and the Nile. The caliphs were at first 
Commanders of the Faithful in reality; but they were 
soon degraded, both in Cairo and Baghdad, to the posi- 
tion of the Roman Pope at the present time. The gov- 
ernment was seized by the Pretorian Guards, who, in 
Baghdad, were descended from Turkish prisoners or 
negroes imported from Zanzibar; and in Egypt from 
Mamelukes or European slaves, brought in their boy- 
hood from the wild countries surrounding the Black 
Sea, trained up from tender years to the practice of 
arms, the sons of Christian parents, but branded with a 
cross on the soles of their feet that they might never 
cease to tread upon the emblem of their native creed. 

However, by means of the Arab conquest the East 
was united as it had never been before. The Euphrates 
‘was no longer a line of partition between two worlds. 





THE DARK CONTINENT 241 


Arab traders established their factories on both sides 
of the Indian Ocean and along the Asiatic shores of 
the Pacific. Men from all countries met at Mecca once 
a year. The religion of the Arabs conquered nations 
whom the Arabs themselves had never seen. When the 
Mahometan Turks of Central Asia took Constantinople, 
and reduced the Caliphates to provinces, although the 
people of Mahomet were driven back to their wilder- 
ness, the strength and glory of his religion was in- 
creased. In the same manner the conquest of Hindostan 
was an achievement of Islam, in which the Arabs bore 
no part, and in Africa also we shall find that the Koran 
reigns over extensive regions which the Arabs visit only 
as travellers and merchants. 

Once upon a time Morocco and Spain were one coun- 
try, and Europe extended to the Atlas mountains, which 
stood upon the shores of a great salt sea. Beyond that. 
ocean, to the south, lay the Dark Continent, surrounded 
on all sides by water, except on the north-east, where it 
was joined to Asia near Aden by an isthmus. A geo- 
logical revolution converted the African ocean into 4 
sandy plain, and the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb and. 
Gibraltar were torn open by the retreating waves. But 
the Sahara, though no longer under water, is still in 
reality a sea; the true Africa commences on its southern 
coast, and is entirely distinct from the European-like 
countries between the Mediterranean and the Atlas, and 
from the strip of garden land which is cast down every 
year in the desert by the Nile. The Black Africa or 
Soudan is a gigantic table-land; its sides are built of 
granite mountains which surround it with a parapet or 
brim, and which send down rivers on the outside to- 
wards the sea, on the inside into the plateau. The out- 
side rivers are brief and swift: the inside rivers are 
long and sluggish in their course, widening in all direc- 
tions, collecting into enormous lakes, and sometimes 


242 THE GREAT PLATEAU 


flowing forth through gaps in the parapet to the Sahara 
or the sea. 

A table-land is seldom so uniform and smooth as the 
word denotes. The African plateau is intersected by 
mountain ranges and ravines, juts into volcanic isolated 
cones, varies much in its climate, its aspect, its produe- 
tions, and in its altitude above the sea. It may be 
divided into platforms or river basins which are true 
geographical provinces, and each of which should be 
labelled with the names of its explorers. There is the 
platform of Abyssinia, which belongs to Bruce; the plat- 
form of the White Nile, including the Lakes of Burton 
(Tanganyika), of Speke (Victoria Nyanza) , and of 
Baker (Albert Nyanza); the platform of the Zambezi, 
with its lakes Nyassa and Ngami, discovered by Liv- 
ingstone, the greatest of African explorers;*the platform 
of the Congo, including the regions of Western Equa- 
torial Africa, hitherto unexplored; the platform of 
South Africa (below 20°S), which enjoys an Australian 
climate, and also Australian wealth in its treasure-filled 
mountains and its wool-abounding plains; and lastly the 
platform of the Niger, which deserves a place, as will be 
shown, in universal history. The discoverers of the 
Niger in its upper parts are Park, who first saw the 
Niger, Caillié, and myself: in its central and eastern 
parts, Laing, who first reached Timbuctoo, Caillié, who 
first returned from it, Denham, Clapperton, Lander, and 
Barth. 

The original inhabitants of Africa were the Hotten- 
tots or Bushmen, a dwarfish race who have restless, 
rambling, ape-like eyes, a click in their speech, and 
bodies which are the wonder of anatomists. They are 
now found only on the South African platform, or per- 
haps here and there on the platform of the Congo. 
They have been driven southward by the negroes, as the 
Esquimaux in America were driven north by the Red 
Indians, and the Finns in Europe by the Celtic tribes, 


THE AFRICANS 243 


while the negroes themselves have yielded in some 
parts of Africa to the Asiatic tribes, as the Celts in 
Gaul and Britain yielded to the Germans. 

These negroes are sometimes of so deep a brown, 
that the skin appears to be quite black; sometimes 
their skin is as light as a mulatto’s: the average tint 
is a rich deep bronze. Their eyes are dark, though 
blue eyes are occasionally seen; their hair is black, 
though sometimes of a rusty red, and is always of a 
woolly texture. To this rule there are no exceptions; 
it is the one constant character, the one infallible sign 
by which the race may be detected. Their lips are not 
invariably thick; their noses are frequently well formed. 
In physical appearance they differ widely from one an- 
other. The inhabitants of the swamps, the dark forests, 
and the mountains, are flat-nosed, long-armed, thin- 
calved, with mouths like muzzles, broad splay feet, and 
projecting heels. It was for the most part from this 
class that the American slave markets were supplied; 
the negroes of the States and the West Indies represent 
the African in the same manner as the people of the 
Pontine marshes represent the inhabitants of Italy. 
The negroes of South Africa stand at the opposite ex- 
treme. Enjoying an excellent climate and a wholesome 
supply of food, they are superior to most other people 
of their race. Yet it is certain that they are negroes, 
for they have woolly hair, and they do not differ in lan- 
guage or manners from the inhabitants of the other 
platforms. When the Portuguese first traded on the 
African coasts, they gave the name Caffres (or Pagans) 
to the negroes of Guinea as well as to those of the 
Cape and the Mozambique. It is quite an accident that 
the name has been retained for the latter tribes alone; 
yet such is the power of a name, that the Caffres and 
negroes are universally supposed to be distinct. It is 
impossible, however, to draw any line between the two. 
Pure negroes are born on the coast of Guinea and in 


244 NEGRO PHYSIQUE 


the interior with complexions as light, with limbs as 
symmetrical, and with features as near to the European 
standard as can be found in all Caffraria. Between the 
hideous beings of the Nile and Niger deltas and the 
robust shepherds of the south, or the aristocratic chief- 
tains of the west, there is a wide difference no doubt, 
but the intermediate gradations exist. There is also 
much variety among the negroes in respect to manners, 
mental condition, political government, and mode of life. 
Some tribes live only on the fruit of net and spear, eked 
out with insects, and berries, and shells. Property is ill 
defined among them; if a man makes a canoe, the others 
use it when they please; if he builds a better house than 
his neighbours, they pull it down. Others, though still 
in the hunting condition, have gardens of plantains and 
cassada. In this condition the head man of the village 
has little power, but property is secured by law. Other 
tribes are pastoral, and resemble the Arabs in their 
laws and customs; the patriarchal system prevails among 
them. There are regions in which the federal system 
prevails; many villages are leagued together; and the 
head men, acting as deputies of their respective bor- 
oughs, meet in congress to debate questions of foreign 
policy, and to enact laws. Large empires exist in the 
Soudan. In some of these the king is a despot, who pos- 
sesses a powerful body-guard, equivalent to a standing 
army, a court, with its regulations of etiquette, and a 
well-ordered system of patronage and surveillance. In 
others he is merely an instrument in the hands of priests 
or military nobles, and is kept concealed, giving audi- 
ence from behind a curtain to excite the veneration of 
the vulgar. There are also thousands of large walled 
cities resembling those of Europe in the middle ages, 
or of ancient Greece, or of Italy before the supremacy 
of Rome, encircled by pastures and by arable estates, 
and by farming villages, to which the citizens repair at 
the harvest time to superintend the labour of their 


AFRICAN HUTS 245 


slaves. But such cities, with their villeggiatura, their 
municipal government, their agora, or forum, their for- 
tified houses, their feuds and street frays of Capulet and 
Montague, are not indigenous in Africa; their existence 
is comparatively modern, and is due to the influence of 
Religion. 

An African village (old style) is usually a street of 
huts, with walls like hurdles, and the thatch projecting 
so that its owner may sit beneath it in sun or rain. 
The door is low; one has to crawl in order to go in. 
There are no windows. The house is a single room. In 
its midst burns a fire which is never suffered to go out, 
for it is a light in darkness, a servant, a companion, and 
a guardian angel; it purifies the miasmatic air. The 
roof and walls are smoke-dried, but clean; in one corner 
is a pile of wood neatly cut up into billets, and in 
another is a large earthen jar filled with water, on 
which floats a gourd or calabash, a vegetable bowl. 
Spears, bows, quivers, and nets hang from pegs upon the 
walls. Let us suppose that it is night; four or five black 
forms are lying in a circle with their feet towards the 
fire, and two dogs with pricked up ears creep close to 
the ashes which are becoming grey and cold. 

The day dawns; a dim light appears through the 
crevices and crannies of the walls. The sleepers rise 
and roll up their mats, which are their beds, and place 
on one side the round logs of wood which are their 
pillows. The man takes down his bow and arrows from 
the wall, fastens wooden rattles round his dogs’ necks, 
and goes out into the bush. The women replenish the 
fire, and lift up an inverted basket whence sally forth 
a hen and her chickens, which make at once for the 
open door to find their daily bread for themselves out- 
side. The women take hoes, and go to the plantation, 
or they take pitchers to fill at the brook. They wear 
round the waist, before and behind, two little aprons 
made from a certain bark, soaked and beaten until it is 


246 THE CALM 


as flexible as leather. Every man has a plan#ation of 
these cloth trees around his hut. The unmarried girls 
wear no clothes at all; but they are allowed to decorate 
themselves with bracelets and anklets of iron, flowers 
in their ears, necklaces of red berries like coral, girdles 
of white shells, hair oiled and padded out with the 
chignon, and sometimes white ashes along the parting. 

The ladies fill-their pitchers, and take their morning 
bath, discussing the merits or demerits of their hus- 
bands. The air is damp and cold, and the trees and 
grass are heavy with dew; but presently the sun begins 
to shine, the dewdrops fall, heavy and large as drops of 
rain; the birds chirp; the flowers expand their drowsy 
leaves, and receive the morning calls of butterflies and 
bees. The forest begins to buzz and hum like a great 
factory awaking to its work. 

When the sun is high, boys come from the bush with 
vegetable bottles frothing over with palm wine. The 
cellar of the African, and his glass and china shop, and 
his clothing warehouse, are in the trees. In the midst 
of the village is a kind of shed, a roof supported on 
bare poles. It is the palaver house, in which at this 
hour the old men sit, and debate the affairs of state 
or decide law suits, each orator holding a spear when he 
is speaking, and planting it in the ground before him 
as he resumes his seat. Oratory is the African’s one 
fine art: his delivery is fluent; his harangues, though 
diffuse, are adorned with phrases of wild poetry. That 
building is also the club house of the elders, and there, 
when business is over, they pass the heat of the day, 
seated on logs which are smooth and shiny from use. At 
the hour of noon their wives or children bring them 
palm wine, and present it on their knees, clapping their 
hands in token of respect. And then all is still: it ig 
the hour of silence and tranquillity; the hour which the 
Portuguese call the calm. The sun sits enthroned on the 
summit of the sky; its white light is poured upon the 


) 


THE DANCE 247 


earth; the straw thatch shines like snow. The forest is. 
silent; all nature sleeps. 

Then down, down, down sinks the sun, and its rays 
shoot slantwise through the trees. The hunters return, 
and their friends run out and greet them as if they 
had been gone for years, murmuring to them in a kind 
of baby language, calling them by their names of love, 
shaking their right hands, caressing their faces, patting 
them upon their breasts, embracing them in all ways. 
except with the lips, for the kiss is unknown among the 

_ Africans. And so they toy and babble and laugh with 
one another till the sun turns red, and the air turns 
dusky, and the giant trees cast deep shadows across. 
the street. Strange perfumes arise from the earth; fire- 
flies sparkle; grey parrots come forth from the forest, 
and fly screaming round intending to roost in the neigh- 
bourhood of man. The women bring their husbands the: 
gourd-dish of boiled plantains or bush-yams, made hot. 
with red pepper, seasoned with fish or venison sauce. 
And when this simple meal is ended, boom! boom! goes 
the big drum; the sweet reed flute pipes forth; the girls 
and lads begin to sing. In a broad clean swept place 
they gather together, jumping up and down with glee: 
the young men form in one row, the women in another, 
and dance in two long lines, retreating and advancing 
with graceful undulations of their bodies, and arms wav- 
ing in the air. And now there is a squealing, wailing, 
unearthly sound, and out of the wood, with a hop, skip, 
and jump, comes Mumbo Jumbo, a hideous mask on his 
face and a scourge in his hand. Woe to the wife who 
would not cook her husband’s dinner, or who gave him 
saucy words; for Mumbo Jumbo is the censor of female 
morals. Well the guilty ones know him as they run 
screaming to their huts. Then again the dance goes on, 
and if there is a moon it does not cease throughout 
the night. 

Such is the picturesque part of savage life. But it. 


248 AN AFRICAN CROCKFORD’S 


is not savage life; it merely lies upon the surface as 
paint lies upon the skin. Let us take a walk through 
that same village on another day. Here, in a hut, is 
& young man with one leg in the stocks, and with his 
right hand bound to his neck by a cord. The palm 
wine, and the midnight dance, and the furtive caresses 
of Asua overpowered his discretion; he was detected, and 
now he is “put in log.” If his relations do not pay the 
fine, he will be sold as a slave; or if there is no demand 
for slaves in that country, he will be killed. His 
friends reprove him for trying to steal what the hus- 
band was willing to sell; and might he not have guessed 
that Asua was a decoy? 

Another day the palaver-house has the aspect of a 
Crockford’s. An old man, who is one of the village 
grandees, is spinning nuts for high stakes, and has drunk 
too much to see that he is overmatched. He loses his 
mats, his weapons, his goats, and his fowls, his planta- 
tion, his house, his slaves whom he took prisoners in 
his young and war-like days, his wives, and his child- 
dren, and his aged mother who fed him at her breast,— 
all are lost, all are gone. And then, with flushed eyes 
and trembling hand, he begins to gamble for himself, 
He stakes his right leg, and loses it. He may not move 
it until he has won it back, or until it is redeemed. 
He loses both legs; he stakes his body, and loses that 
also, and becomes a bond-servant, or is sold as a slave. 

Let us give another scene. A young man of family 
has died; the whole village is convulsed with grief and 
fear. It does not appear natural to them that a man 
Should die before he has grown old. Some malignant 
power is at work among them. Is it an evil spirit whom 
they have unwittingly offended, and who is taking its 
revenge, or is it a witch? The great fetish-man has 
been sent for, and soon he arrives, followed by his 
disciples. He wears a cap waving with feathers, and 
a party-coloured garment covered with charms ; horns 





THE ORDEAL 249 


of gazelles, shells of snails, and a piece of leopard’s liver 
wrapped up in the leaves of a poison-giving tree. His 
face is stained with the white juice from a dead man’s 
brain. He rings an iron bell as he enters the town, and 
at the same time the Drum begins to beat. The Drum 
has its language, so that those who are distant from 
the village understand what it is saying. With short, 
lively sounds it summons to the dance; it thunders 
forth the alarm of fire or war, loudly and quickly with 
no interval between the beats; and now it tolls the hour 
of judgment and the day of death. The fetish-man ex-~ 
amines the dead man, and says it is the work of a 
witch. He casts lots with knotted cords; he mutters 
incantations; he passes round the villagers, and points 
out the guilty person, who is usually some old woman 
whom popular opinion has previously suspected and is 
ready to condemn. She is, however, allowed the benefit 
of an ordeal: a gourd filled with the red water 1s given, 
her to drink. If she is innocent it acts an an emetic; 
if she is guilty, it makes her fall senseless to the ground. 
She is then put to death with a variety of tortures: burnt 
alive, or torn limb from limb; tied on the beach at low 
water to be drowned by the rising tide; rubbed with 
honey and laid out in the sun; or buried in an ant-hill, 
the most horrible death of all. 

These examples are sufficient to show that the life 
of the savage is not a happy one; and the existence of 
each clan or tribe is precarious in the extreme. They 
are like the wild animals, engaged from day to night 
in seeking food, and ever watchful against the foes by 
whom they are surrounded. The men who go out hunt- 
ing, the girls who go with their pitchers to the village 
brook, are never sure that they will return; for there 
is always war with some neighbouring village, and their 
method of making war is by ambuscade. But besides 
these real and ordinary dangers, the savage believes 
himself to be encompassed by evil spirits, who may at 
any moment spring upon him in the guise of a leopard, 


250 THE MOSLEM NEGRO 


or cast down upon him the dead branch of a tree. In 
order to propitiate these invisible beings, his life is 
entangled with intricate rites; it is turned this way and 
that way as oracles are delivered, or as omens appear. 
It is impossible to describe, or even to imagine, the 
tremulous condition of the savage mind; yet the trav- 
eller can see from their aspect and manners that they 
dwell in a state of never-ceasing dread. 

Let us now suppose that a hundred years have passed, 
and let us visit that village again. The place itself, and 
the whole country around has been transformed. The 
forest has disappeared, and in its stead are fields cov- 
ered with the glossy blades of the young rice; with the 
tall red tufted maize, with the millet and the Guinea 
corn; with the yellow flowers of the tobacco plant, grow~ 
ing in wide fields; and with large shrubberies of cotton, 
the snowy wool peeping forth from the expanding leaves. 
Before us stands a great town surrounded by walls of 
red clay flanked by towers, and with heavy wooden 
gates. Day dawns, and the women come forth to the 
brook decorously dressed in blue cotton robes passed 
over the head as a hood. Men ride forth on horse- 
back, wearing white turbans and swords suspended on 
their right shoulders by a crimson sash. They are the 
unmixed descendants of the forest savage; their faces 
are those of pure negroes, but the expression is not the 
same. Their manners are grave and composed; they 
salute one another, saying in the Arabic, “Peace 
be with you.” The palaver house or town-hall is also 
the mosque; the parliamentary debates and the law 
trials, which are there held, have all the dignity of a 
religious service: they are opened with prayer, and the 
name of the Creator is often solemnly invoked by the 
orator or advocate, while all the elders touch their 
foreheads with their hands, and murmur in response, 
Amina! Amina! (Amen, Amen). The town is pervaded 
by a bovine smell, sweet to the nostril of those who have 


THE SCHOOL 251 


travelled long in the beefless lands of the people of the 
forest. Sounds of industry may also be heard; not only 
the clinking of the blacksmith’s hammer, but also the 
rattling of the loom, the thumping of the cloth maker, 
and the song of the cordwainer, as he sits cross-legged 
making saddles or shoes. The women, with bow, and 
distaff, and spindle, are turning the soft tree wool into 
thread; the work in the fields is done by slaves. The 
elders smoke or take snuff in their verandahs, and some- 
times study a page of the Koran. When the evening 
draws on there is no sound of flute and drum. A bon- 
fire of brushwood is lighted in the market place, and the 
boys of the town collect around it with wooden boards 
in their hands, and bawl their lessons, swaying their 
bodies to and fro, by which movement they imagine the 
memory is assisted. Then rises a long loud harmonious 
cry, “Come to prayers, come to prayers. Come to 
security. God is great. He liveth and he dieth not. 
Come to prayers. O thou Bountiful!” 


La ilah illa Allah: Muhammed Rasul Allah. 
Allahu Akbaru. Allahu Akbar. 


Such towns as these may be less interesting to the 
traveller than the pagan villages; he finds them merely 
a secondhand copy of Eastern life. But though they are 
not so picturesque, their inhabitants are happier and 
better men. Violent and dishonest deeds are no longer 
arranged by pecuniary compensation. Husbands can 
no longer set wife-traps for their friends; adultery is 
treated as a criminal offence. Men can no _ longer 
squander away their relations at the gaming table, and 
stake their own bodies on a throw. Men can no longer 
be tempted to vice and crime under the influence of 
palm wine. Women can no longer be married by a 
great chief in herds, and treated like beasts of burden 
and like slaves. Each wife has an equal part of her 
husband’s love by law; it is not permitted to forsake 


252 KORAN LAW 


and degrade the old wife for the sake of the young. 
Each wife has her own house, and the husband may 
not enter until he has knocked at the door and re- 
ceived the answer, Bismillah, in the name of God. 
Every boy is taught to read and write in Arabic, which 
is the religious and official language in Soudan, as Latin 
was in Europe, in the middle ages; they also write 
their own language with the Arabic character, as we 
write ours with the Roman letters. In such countries, 
the policy of isolation is at an end; they are open to 
all the Moslems in the world, and are thus connected 
with the lands of the East. Here there is a remark- 
able change, and one that deserves a place in history. 
It is a movement the more interesting, since it is still 
actively going on. The Mahometan religion has already 
overspread a region of Negroland as large as Europe. 
It is firmly established not only in the Africa of the 
Mediterranean and the Nile, and in the oases of the 
Sahara, but also throughout that part of the Continent 
which we have termed the platform of the Niger. 

In 1797 Mungo Park discovered the Niger in the 
heart of Africa, at a point where it was as broad as 
the Thames at Westminster; in 1817 René Caillié 
crossed it at a point considerably higher up; in 1822 
Major Laing attempted to reach it by striking inland 
from Sierra Leone, but was forced by the natives to 
return when he was only fifty miles distant from the 
river; and in 1869 I made the same attempt, was turned 
back at the same place, but made a fresh expedition, 
and reached the river at a higher point than Caillié and 
Park. But my success also was incomplete, for native 
wars made it impossible for me to reach the source, 
though it was near at hand; and that still remains, a 
splendid prize for one who will walk in my footsteps, as 
I walked in those of Laing. The source of the Niger, as 
given in the maps, was fixed by Laing from native in- 
formation, which I ascertained to be correct. There is 


THE GREAT RIVER 253 


no doubt that this river rises in the backwoods of Sierra 
Leone, at a distance of only two hundred miles from the 
coast. It runs for some time as a foaming hill-torrent, 
bearing obscure and barbarous names, and, at the point 
where I found it, glides into the broad calm breast of the 
plateau, and receives its ‘llustrious name of the Joliba, 
or Great River. 

It flows north-east, and enters the Sahara, as if in- 
tending, like the Nile, to pour its waters into the Med- 
‘terranean Sea. But suddenly it turns towards the east, 
so that Herodotus, who heard of it when he was at 
Memphis, supposed that it joined the Nile; and such 
was the prevailing opinion not only among the Greeks, 
but also among the Arabs in the middle ages. They did 
not know that the eccentric river again wheels round, 
flows towards the sea near which it rose, passes through 
the latitude of its birth, and, having thus described 
three-quarters of a circle, debouches by many mouths 
into the Bight of Benin. So singular a course might well 
baffle the speculations of geographers and the investi- 
gations of explorers. The people who dwell on the banks 
of the river do not know where it ends. I was told by 
some that it went to Mecca, but by others that it went 
to Jerusalem. Mungo Park’s own theory was ludi- 
crously incorrect; he believed that the Congo was its 
mouth; others declared that it never reached the sea at 
all. It was Lander who discovered the mouth of the 
Niger, at one time as mysterious as the sources of the 
Nile, and so established the hypothesis which Reichard 
had advanced, and which Mannert had declared to be 
“eontrary to nature.” 

The Niger platform or basin is flat, with here and 
there a line of rolling hills containing gold. The vege- 
tation consists of high coarse grass and trees of small 
stature, except on the banks of streams, where they 
grow to a larger size. The palm-oil tree is not found 
on this plateau, but the shea-butter or tallow tree 


254 THE NIGER PLATFORM 


abounds in natural plantations, which will some day 
prove a source of enormous wealth. As the river flows 
on, these trees disappear, the plains widen and are 
smoothed out; the country assumes the character of the 
Sahara. | 

The negroes who inhabited the platform of the Niger 
lived chiefly on the banks of the river, subsisting on 
lotus-root and fish. Like all Savages, they were jealous 
and distrustful; their intercourse was that of war. But 
nature, by means of a curious contrivance, has rendered 
it impossible for men to remain eternally apart. Com- 
mon salt is one of the mineral constituents of the human 
body, and savages, who live chiefly on vegetable food, 
are dependent upon it for their life. In Africa, children 
may be seen sucking it like Sugar. “Come and eat with 
us to-day,” says the hospitable African; “we are going 
to have salt for dinner.” It is not in all countries that 
this mineral food is to be found ; but the saltless lands 
in the Soudan contain gold dust, ivory, and slaves; 
and so a system of barter is arranged, and isolated tribes 
are brought into contact with one another. 

The two great magazines are the desert and the ocean. 
At the present day, the white powdery English salt is 
carried on donkeys and slaves to the upper waters of 
the Niger, and is driving back the crystalline salt of 
the Sahara. In the ancient days, the salt of the plateau 
came entirely from the mines of Bilma and Toudeyni, 
in the desert, which were occupied and worked by negro 
tribes. But at a period far remote, before the founda- 
tions of Carthage were laid, a Berber nation, now called 
the Tuaricks, overspread the desert, and conquered the 
oases and the mines. This terrible people are yet the 
scourge of the peaceful farmer and the passing caravan. 
They camp in leather tents ; they are armed with lance 
and sword, and with shields, on which is painted the 
image of a cross. The Arabs call them “the mufiled 
ones,” for their mouths and noses are covered with a 


THE BAGHDAD OF THE WEST Gab 


bandage, sometimes black, sometimes white, above 
which sit in deep sockets, like ant-lions, in their pits, 
a pair of dark, cruel, sinister looking eyes. They levy 
tolls on all travellers, and murder those who have the 
reputation of unusual wealth, as they did Miss Tinné, 
whose iron water tanks they imagined to be filled with 
geld. When they poured down on the Sahara, they were 
soon attracted by the rich pastures and alluvial plains 
of the black country. In course of time their raids were 
converted into conquests, and they established a line of 
kingdoms from the Niger to the Nile, in the border land 
between the Sahara and the parallel 10° N. Timbuctoo, 
Haoussa, Bornou, Baghirmi, Waday, Darfur, and Kor- 
dofan, were the names of these kingdoms; in all of them 
Islam is now the religion of the state; all of them belong 
to the Asiatic world. 

The Tuaricks of the Soudan were merely the ruling 
caste, and were much darkened by harem blood: but 
they communicated freely with their brethren of the 
desert, who had dealings with the Berbers beyond the 
Atlas. When the Andalusia of the Arabs became a 
polite and civilised land crowds of ingenious artisans, 
descended from the old Roman craftsmen, or from Greek 
emigrants, or from their Arab apprentices, took archi- 
tecture over to North Africa. The city of Morocco was 
filled with magnificent palaces and mosques; it became 
the metropolis of an independent kingdom; it was called 
the Baghdad of the west; its doctors were as learned 
as the doctors of Cordova, its musicians as skilful as 
the musicians of Seville. A wealthy and powerful 
Morocco could not exist without its influence being felt 
across the desert: the position of Timbuctoo in refer- 
ence to Morocco was precisely that of Meroe to Memphis 
or to Thebes. The Sahara, it is true, is much wider 
across from Morocco to Timbuctoo than from Egypt to 
Ethiopia, but the introduction of camels brought the 
Atlas and the Niger near to one another. The Tuaricks, 


256 ARAB EXPLORERS 


who had previously lived on horses, under whose bellies 
they tied water bottles of leather when they went on a 
long journey, had been able to cross the desert only 
at certain seasons of the year; but now with the aid of 
the camel, which they at once adopted and from which 
they bred the famous Mehara strain, they could cross 
the Sahara at its widest part in a few days. A regular 
trade was established between the two countries and 
was conducted by the Berbers. Arab merchants, de- 
sirous of seeing with their own eyes the wondrous land 
of ivory and gold, took passage in the caravans, crossed 
the yellow seas, sprang from their camels upon the green 
shores of the Soudan, and kneeling on the banks of the 
Niger, with their faces turned towards Mecca, dipped 
their hands in its waters and praised the name of the 
Lord. They journeyed from city to city, and from 
court to court, and composed works of travel which 
were read with eager delight all over the Moslem world, 
from Spain to Hindostan. The Arabs thronged to this 
newly discovered world. They built factories; they 
established schools; they converted dynasties. They 
covered the river with masted vessels; they built ma- 
jestic temples with graceful minaret and swelling dome. 
Theological colleges and public libraries were founded; 
camels came across the desert laden with books; the 
negroes swarmed to the lectures of the mollahs; Plato 
and Aristotle were studied by the banks of the Niger, 
and the glories of Granada were reflected at Timbuctoo. 
That city became the refuge of political fugitives and 
criminals from Morocco. In the sixteenth century the 
Emperor despatched across the desert a company of 
harquebusiers, who, with their strange, terrible weapons, 
everywhere triumphed like the soldiers of Cortes and 
Pizarro in Mexico and Peru. These musketeers made 
enormous conquests, not for their master, but for them- 
selves. They established an oligarchy of their own; it 
was afterwards dethroned by the natives, but there yet 


THE FAIR 257 


exist men who, as Barth informs us, are called the de- 
scendants of the musketeers and who wear a distinctive 
dress. But that imperial expedition was the last exploit 
of the Moors. After the conquest of Granada by the 
Christians and of Algeria by the Turks, Morocco, en- 
compassed by enemies, became a savage and isolated 
land; Timbuctoo, its commercial dependent, fell into 
decay, and is now chiefly celebrated as a cathedral town. 

The Arabs carried cotton and the art of its manufac- 
ture into the Soudan, which is one of the largest cotton 
growing areas in the world. Its Manchester is Kano, 
which manufactures blue cloth and coloured plaids, 
clothes a vast negro population, and even exports its 
goods to the lands of the Mediterranean Sea. Denham 
and Clapperton, who first reached the lands of Haoussa 
and Bornou, were astonished to find among the negroes 
magnificent courts; regiments of cavalry, the horses 
caparisoned in silk for gala days and clad in coats of 
mail for war; long trains of camel laden with salt, and 
natron, and corn, and cloth, and cowrie shells, which 
form the currency, and kola nuts, which the Arabs call 
“the coffee of the negroes.” They attended with wonder 
gigantic fairs at which the cotton goods of Manchester, 
the red cloth of Saxony, double-barrelled guns, razors, 
tea and sugar, Nuremburg ware and writing-paper were 
exhibited for sale. They also found merchants who 
offered to cash their bills upon houses at Tripoli; and 
scholars acquainted with Avicenna, Averroes, and the 
Greek philosophers. 

The Mahometan religion was spread in Central Africa 
to a great extent by the travelling Arab merchants, 
who were welcomed everywhere at the negro or semi- 
negro courts, and who frequently converted the pagan 
kings by working miracles, that is to say, by means of 
events which accidentally followed their solemn prayers; 
such as the healing of a disease, rain in the midst of 
drought, or a victory in war. But the chief instrument 


258 MOSLEM MISSIONARIES 


of conversion was the school. It is much to the credit 
of the negroes that they keenly appreciate the advan- 
tages of education: they appear to possess an instinctive 
veneration and affection for the book. Wherever Ma- 
hometans settled, the sons of chiefs were placed under 
their tuition; a Mahometan quarter was established; it 
was governed by its own laws; its sheik rivalled in 
power and finally surpassed the native kings. The 
machinery of the old pagan court might still go on; the 
negro chief might receive the magnificent title of sultan; 
he might be surrounded by albinoes and dwarfs, and big- 
headed men and buffoons; he might sit in a cage, or 
behind a curtain in a palace with seven gates, and re- 
ceive the ceremonial visits of his nobles, who stripped 
off a garment at each gate, and came into his presence 
naked, and cowered on the ground, and clapped their 
hands, and sprinkied their heads with dust, and then 
turned round and sat with their backs presented in rev- 
erence towards him, as if they were unable to bear the 
sight of his countenance shining like a well-blacked 
boot. But the Arab or Moorish sheik would be in reality 
the king, deciding all questions of foreign policy, of peace 
and war, of laws and taxes, and commercial regulations, 
holding a position resembling that of the Gothic generals 
who placed Libius Severus and Augustulus upon the 
throne; of the mayors of the palace beside the Mero- 
vingian princes; of the Company’s servants at the court 
of the Great Mogul. And when the Mahometans had 
become numerous, and a fitting season had arrived, the 
sheik would point out a well-known Koran text, and 
would proclaim war against the surrounding pagan 
kings, and so the movement which had been commenced 
by the school would be continued by the sword. 

It may, however, be doubted whether the Arab mer- 
chants alone would have spread Islam over the Niger 
plateau. On the east coast of Africa they have pos- 
sessed settlements from time immemorial. Before the 


ARABS ON THE EAST COAST 259 


Greeks of Alexandria sailed into the Indian Ocean; 
before the Tyrian vessels, with Jewish supercargoes, 
passed through the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, the Arabs 
of Yemen had established factories in the Mozambique, 
and on the opposite coast of Malabar, and carried on a 
trade between the two lands, selling to the Indians 
ivory, ebony, slaves, bees-wax, and gold-dust, brought 
down in quills from the interior by the negroes, to whom 
they sold in return the sugar, beads, and blue cotton 
goods of Hindostan. In the period of the caliphs these 
settlements were strengthened and increased, in conse- 
quence of civil war, by fugitive tribes from Oman, and 
other parts of the Arabian peninsula. The emigrants 
made Africa their home; they built large towns, which 
they surrounded with orchards of the orange tree, and 
plantations of the date; they introduced the culture of 
tobacco, sugar-cane, and cotton. They were loved and 
revered by the negroes: they made long journeys into 
the interior for the purposes of trade. Yet their religion 
has made no progress; and they do not attempt to con- 
vert the blacks. Their towns resemble those of the 
Europeans; they dwell apart from the natives, and above 
them. 

The Mahometans who entered the Niger regions, were 
not only the Arab merchants, but also the Berbers 
of the desert, who, driven by war, or instigated by am- 
bition, poured into the Soudan by tribes, seized lands 
and women, and formed mulatto nationalities. Of these 
the Foulas are the most famous. They were originally 
natives of Northern Africa; having intermarried during 
many generations with the natives, they have often the 
appearance of pure negroes; but they always call them- 
selves white men, however black their skin may seem to 
be. In the last century they were dispersed in small 
and puny tribes. Some wandered as gipsies, selling 
wooden bowls; others were roaming shepherd clans, pay- 
ing tribute to the native kings, and suffering much ill- 


260 THE FOULAS 


treatment. In other parts they lived a bandit life. 
Sometimes, but rarely, they resided in towns which they 
had conquered, pursued commerce, and tilled the soil. 
Yet in war they were far superior to the negroes: if only 
they could be united, the most powerful kingdoms would 
be unable to withstand them. And, finally, their day 
arrived. A man of their own race returned from Mecca, 
a pilgrim and a*prophet, gathered them like wolves be- 
neath his standard, and poured them forth on the 
Soudan. 

The pilgrimage to Mecca is incumbent only on those 
who can afford it; but hundreds of devout negroes every 
year put on their shrouds and beg their way across the 
Continent to Massowah. There taking out a few grains 
of gold dust cunningly concealed between the leaves of 
their Korans, they pay their passage across the Red 
Sea, and tramp it from Jedda to Mecca, feeding as they 
go on the bodies of the camels that have been left to 
die, and whose meat is lawful if the throat is cut before 
the animal expires. As soon as the negroes or Takrouri 
as they are called, arrive in the Holy City, they at once 
set to work, some as porters, and some as carriers of 
water in leather skins; others manufacture baskets and 
mats of date leaves; others establish a market for fire- 
wood, which they collect in the neighbouring hills. They 
inhabit miserable huts, or ruined houses in the quarter 
of the lower classes, where the sellers of charcoal dwell, 
and where locusts are sold by the measure. Some of 
these poor and industrious creatures spread their mats 
in the cloisters of the Great Mosque, and stay all the 
time beneath that sacred and hospitable roof. They 
are subject to exclamatory fits and pious convulsions so 
common among the negroes of the Southern States. 
Often they may be seen prostrate on the pavement, 
beating their foreheads against the stones, weeping bit- 
terly, and pouring forth the wildest ejaculations. 

The Great Mosque at Mecca is a spacious square, sur- 


THE GREAT MOSQUE 261 


rounded by a colonnade. In the midst of the quad- 
rangle is a small building which is called the Caaba. It 
has no windows; its door, which is seldom opened, is 
coated with silver; its padlock, once of pure gold, is now 
of silver gilt. On its threshold are placed every night 
various small wax candles and perfuming pans filled 
with aloeswood and musk. The walls of the building 
are covered with a veil of black silk, tucked up on one 
side, so as to leave exposed the famous Black Stone 
which is niched in the wall outside. The veil is not 
fastened close to the building, so that the least breath 
of air, causes it to wave in slow undulating movements, 
hailed with prayer by the kneeling crowd around. They 
believe that it is caused by the wings of guardian angels 
who will transport the Caaba to Paradise when the last 
trumpet sounds. 

At a little distance from this building, is the Zemzem 
well, and while some of the pilgrims are standing by its 
mouth waiting to be served, or walking round the Caaba, 
or stooping to kiss the stone, other scenes may be ob- 
served in the cloisters and the square; and as in the 
Temple at Jerusalem, these are not all of the most edify- 
ing nature. Children are playing at games, or feeding 
the wild pigeons whom long immunity has rendered 
tame. Numerous schools are going on, the boys chant- 
ing in a loud voice, and the masters’ baton sometimes 
falling on their backs. In another corner, a religious 
lecture is being delivered. Men of all nations are clus- 
tered in separate groups; the Persian heretics with their 
caps mounting to heaven, and their beards descending 
to the earth; the Tartar, with oblique eyes and rounded 
limbs, and light silk handkerchief tied round his brow; 
Turks with shaven faces, and in red caps: the lean In- 
dian pauper, begging with a miserable whine; and one 
or two wealthy Hindoo merchants not guiltless of din- 
ners given to infidels, and of iced champagne. At the 
same time, an active business is being done in sacred 


262 ABD-UL-WAHHAB 


keepsakes; rosaries made of camel bone, bottles of Zem- 
zem water, dust collected from behind the veil, tooth- 
sticks made of a fibrous root, such as that which Ma- 
homet himself was wont to use, and coarsely executed 
pictures of the Caaba. Mecca itself, like most. cities 
frequented by strangers, whether pilgrims or mariners, 
is not an abode of righteousness and virtue. As the 
Tartars say of.it, “The torch is dark at its foot,” and 
many a pilgrim might exclaim with the Arabian Ovid 


“I set out in the hopes of lightening my sins 
And returned, bringing home with me a fresh load of trans- 
gressions.” 


But the very wickedness of a Holy City deepens real 
enthusiasm into severity and wrath. When Abd-ul- 
Wahhab saw taverns opened in Mecca itself, and the 
inhabitants alluring the pilgrims to every kind of vice: 
when he found that the sacred places were made a show ; 
that the mosque was inhabited by guides and officials 
who were as greedy as beasts of prey: that wealth, not 
piety, was the chief object of consideration in a pilgrim, 
he felt as Luther felt at Rome. The disgust which was 
excited in his mind by the manners of the day was 
extended also to the doctrines that were in vogue. The 
prayers that were offered up to Mahomet and the saints 
resembled the prayers that were once offered up to the 
Daughters of Heaven, the Intercessors of the ancient 
Arabs. The pilgrimages that were made to the tombs of 
holy men were the old journeys to the ancestral graves. 
The worship of One God, which Mahomet had been sent 
to restore, had again become obscured; the Days of 
Darkness had returned. He preached a Unitarian re- 
vival; he held up as his standard and his guide the 
Koran, and nothing but the Koran; he founded a puri- 
tan sect which is now a hundred years of age, and 
ie remains an element of power and disturbance in the 

ast. 


THE BLACK PROPHET 263 


Danfodio, the Black Prophet, also went out of Mecca, 
his soul burning with zeal. He determined to reform 
the Soudan. He forbade, like Abd-ul-Wahhab, the 
smoking of tobacco, the wearing of ornaments, and! 
finery. But he had to contend with more gross abuses 
still. In many negro lands which professed Islam, palm 
wine and millet beer were largely consumed: the women 
did not veil their faces nor even their bosoms; immodest 
dances were performed to the profane music of the 
drum: learned men gained a livelihood by writing 
charms: the code of the Koran was often supplanted 
by the old customary laws. Danfodio sent letters to 
the great kings of Timbuctoo, Haoussa, and Bornou, 
commanding them to reform their own lives and those 
of their subjects, or he would chastise them in the name 
of God. They received these instructions from an un- 
known man, as the King of Kings received the letter of 
Mahomet, and their fate resembled his. Danfodio united 
the Foula tribes into an army, which he inspired with 
his own spirit. Thirsting for plunder and paradise, the 
Foulas swept over the Soudan; they marched into battle 
with shouts of frenzied joy, singing hymns and waving 
their green flags, on which texts of the Koran were em- 
broidered in letters of gold. The empire which they 
established at the beginning of this century is now 
crumbling away: but the fire is still burning on the 
frontiers. Wherever the Foulas are settled in the neigh- 
bourhood of pagan tribes they are extending their power; 
and although the immediate effects are disastrous, vil- 
lages being laid in ashes, men slaughtered by thousands, 
women and children sold as slaves, yet in the end these 
crusades are productive of good: the villages are con- 
verted into towns; a new land is brought within the 
sphere of commercial and religious intercourse, and is 
added to the Asiatic world. 

The phenomenon of a religious Tamerlane has been 
repeated more than once in Central Africa. The last 


264 THE TURKS IN AFRICA 


example was that of Oumar the Pilgrim, whose capital 
was Segou, and whose conquests extended from Tim- 
- buctoo to the Senegal, where he came into contact with 
French artillery, and for ever lost his prestige as a 
prophet. But we are taught by the science of history 
that these military empires can never long endure. It 
is probable that the Mahometan Soudan will in time be- 
come a province of the Turks. Central Africa, as we 
have shown, received its civilization not from Egypt, 
but from the grand Morocco of the middle ages. Egypt 
has always lived with its back to Africa, its eyes, and 
often its hands, on Syria and Arabia. Abyssinia was 
not subdued by the caliphs, because it was not coveted 
by them; and there was little communication between 
Egypt and Soudan. Mehemet-Ali was the first to re- 
establish the kingdom of the Pharaohs in Ethiopia, and 
to organise negro regiments. Since his time the Turkish 
power has been gradually spreading towards the interior, 
and the expedition of Baker Pacha, whatever may be 
its immediate result, is the harbinger of great events 
to come. Should the Turks be driven out of Europe, 
they would probably become the Emperors of Africa, 
which in the interests of civilisation would be a fortu- 
nate occurrence. The Turkish government is undoubt- 
edly defective in comparison with the governments of 
Europe; but it is perfection itself in comparison with 
the governments of Africa. If the Egyptians had been 
allowed to conquer Abyssinia, there would have been 
no need of an Abyssinian expedition; and nothing but 
Egyptian occupation will put an end to the wars which 
are alway being waged and always have been waged 
in that country between bandit chiefs. Those who are 
anxious that Abyssinian Christianity should be pre- 
served need surely not be alarmed: for the Pope of 
Abyssinia is the Patriarch of Cairo, a Turkish subject; 
and the Aboona or archbishop has always been an Egyp- 
tian. But the Turks no longer have it in their power to 


PROSPECTUS 265 


commit actions which Europeans would condemn. They 
now belong to the civilised system: they are subject to 
the Law of Opinion. Already they have been compelled 
by that mysterious power to suppress the slave-making 
wars which were formerly waged every year from Kor- 
dofan and Sennaar, and which are still being waged from 
the independent kingdoms of Darfur, Waday, Baghirmi, 
and Bornou. Wherever the Turks reign, a European is 
allowed to travel; wherever a European travels, a word 
is spoken on behalf of the oppressed. That word enters 
the newspapers; passes into a diplomatic remonstrance; 
becomes a firman; and a governor or commandant in 
some sequestered province of an Oriental Empire suffers 
the penalty of his misdeeds. It should be the policy of 
European powers to aid the destruction of all savage 
kingdoms, or at least never to interfere on their behalf. 
It has now been shown that a vast region within the 
Dark Continent, the world beyond the sandy ocean, is 
governed by Asiatic laws, and has attained an Asiatic 
civilization. We must next pass to the Atlantic side, 
and study the effects which have been produced among 
the negroes by the intercourse of Europeans. It will 
be found that the transactions on the coast of Guinea 
belong not only to the biography of Africa, but also 
to universal history, and that the domestication of the 
negro has indirectly assisted the material progress of 
Europe, and the development of its morality. The pro- 
gramme of the next chapter will be as follows: The 
rise of Europe out of darkness; the discovery of West- 
ern Africa by the Portuguese; the institution of the slave 
trade; and the history of that great republican and 
philanthropic movement which won its first victory in 
the abolition of the slave trade, 1807; its last in the 
taking of Richmond, 1865. 


CHAPTER III. 
LIBERTY. 


Tue history of Europe in ancient times is the history 
of those lands which adjoin the Mediterranean Sea. 
Beyond the Alps lay a vast expanse of marsh and forest, 
through which flowed the swift and gloomy Rhine. On 
the right side of that river dwelt the Germans; on its 
left, the Celtic Gauls. Both people, in manners and 
customs, resembled the Red Indians. They lived in 
round wigwams, with a hole at the top to let out the 
smoke. They hunted the white-maned bison and the 
brown bear, and trapped the beaver, which then built. 
its lodges by the side of every stream. They passed 
their spare time in gambling, drunkenness, and torpor; 
while their squaws cut the firewood, cultivated their 
garden-plots of grain, tended the shaggy-headed cattle, 
and the hogs feeding on acorns and beech-mast, obedient 
to the horn of the mistress, but savage to strangers as a 
pack of wolves. At an early period, however, the Gauls: 
came into contact with the Pheenicians and the Greeks; 
they served in the Carthaginian armies, and acquired a 
taste for trade; they learnt the cultivation of the vine, 
and some of the metallic arts; their priests, or learned 
men employed the Greek characters in writing. But. 
the Gauls had a mania for martial glory, and often at- 
tacked the peaceful Greek merchants of Marseilles. 
The Greeks at last called in the assistance of the 
Romans, who not only made war on the hostile tribes, 
but on the peaceful tribes as well. Thus commenced the 
conquest of Gaul. It was completed by Caesar, who used. 

266 


ROMAN GAUL 267 


that country as an exercise ground for his soldiers, and 
prepared them, by a hundred battles, for the mighty 
combat in which Pompey was overthrown. 

Military roads were made across the Alps: Roman 
colonies were despatched into the newly conquered land: 
Italian farmers took up their abode in the native towns, 
and the chiefs were required to send their sons to school. 
Thus the Romans obtained hostages, and the Celts were 
pleased to see their boys neatly dressed in white gar- 
ments edged with purple, displaying their proficiency on 
the waxen tablets and the counting board. In a few 
generations the Celts had disappeared. On the banks 
of the Rhone and the Seine magnificent cities arose, 
watered by aqueducts, surrounded by gardens, adorned 
with libraries, temples, and public schools. The inhabi- 
tants called themselves Romans, and spoke with patri- 
otic fervour of the glorious days of the Republic. 

Meanwhile the barbarians beyond the Rhine remained 
in the savage state. They often crossed the river to 
invade the land which had ripened into wealth before 
their eyes: but the frontier was guarded by a chain of 
camps; and the Germans, armed only with clumsy 
spears, and wooden shields, could not break the line of 
Roman soldiers, who were dressed in steel, who were 
splendidly disciplined, and who had military engines. 
The Gauls had once been a warlike people; they now 
abandoned the use of arms. The Empire insured them 
against invasion in return for the taxes which they 
paid. 

But there came a time when the tribute of the prov- 
inces no longer returned to the provinces to be expended 
on the public buildings and the frontier garrisons and 
the military roads. The rivers of gold which had so 
long flowed into Rome at last dried up: the empire 
became poor, and yet its expenses remained the same. 
The Pretorian Guards had still to be paid; the mob of 
the capital had still to be rationed with bread, and 


268 THE ANCIENT GERMANS 


bacon, and wine, and oil, and costly shows. Accord- 
ingly the provinces were made to suffer. Exorbitant 
taxes were imposed: the aldermen and civil councillors 
of towns were compelled to pay enormous fees in virtue 
of their office, and were forbidden to evade such expen- 
sive honours by enlisting in the army, or by taking holy 
orders. The rich were accused of crimes that their 
property might*be seized: the crops in the fields were 
gathered by the police. A blight fell upon the land. 
Men would no longer labour since the fruits of their 
toil might at any time be taken from them. Cornfield 
and meadow were again covered with brambles and 
weeds; the cities were deserted; grass grew in all the 
streets. The province of Gaul was taxed to death, and 
then abandoned by the Romans. The government could 
no longer afford to garrison the Rhine frontier: the 
legions were withdrawn, and the Germans entered. 

The invading armies were composed of free men, who, 
under their respective captains or heads of clans, had 
joined the standard of some noted warrior chief. The 
spoil of the army belonged to the army, and was divided 
according to stipulated rules. The king’s share was 
large, but more than his share he might not have. When 
the Germans, instead of returning with their booty, re- 
mained upon the foreign soil, they partitioned the land 
in the same manner as they partitioned the cattle and 
the slaves, the gold crosses, the silver chalices, the vases, 
the tapestry, the fine linen, and the purple robes. An 
immense region was allotted to the king; other tracts of 
various sizes to the generals and captains (or chiefs 
and chieftains) according to the number of men whom 
they had brought into the field; and each private soldier 
received a piece of ground. But the army, although dis- 
banded, was not extinct; its members remained under 
martial law: the barons or generals were bound to obey — 
the king when he summoned them to war; the soldiers 
to obey their ancient chiefs. Sometimes the king and — 


THE CASTLE KINGS 269 


the great barons gave lands to favourites and friends on 
similar conditions, and at a later period money was paid 
instead of military service, thus originating Rent. 

The nobles of Roman Gaul lived within the city except 
during the villeggiatura in the autumn. The German 
lords preferred the country, and either fortified the 
Roman villas, or built new castles of their own. They 
surrounded themselves with a bodyguard of personal re- 
tainers; their prisoners of war were made to till the 
ground as serfs. And soon they reduced to much the 
same condition the German soldiers, and seized their 
humble lands. In that troubled age none could hold 
property except by means of the strong arm. Men 
found it difficult to preserve their lives, and often pre- 
sented their bodies to some powerful lord in return for 
protection, in return for daily bread. The power of 
the king was nominal: sovereignty was broken and dis- 
persed: Europe was divided amongst castles: and in each 
castle was a prince who owned no authority above his 
own, who held a high court of justice in his hall, issued 
laws to his estates, lived by the court fees, by taxes 
levied on passing caravans, and by ransoms for pris- 
oners, sometimes obtained in fair war, sometimes by 
falling upon peaceful travellers. Dark deeds were done 
within those ivy covered towers which now exist for the 
pleasure of poets and pilgrims of the picturesque. Often 
from turret chambers and grated windows arose the 
shrieks of violated maidens and the yells of tortured 
Jews. Yet castle-life had also its brighter side. To 
cheer the solitude of the isolated house, minstrels and 
poets and scholars were courted by the barons, and 
were offered a peaceful chamber and a place of honour 
at the board. In the towns of ancient Italy and Greece 
there was no family: the home did not exist. The 
women and children dwelt together in secluded cham- 
bers: the men lived a club life in the baths, the porti- 
coes, and the gymnasia. But the castle lord had no 


270 THE CASTLE A HOME 


companions of his own rank except the members of his 
own family. On stormy days, when he could not hunt, 
he found a pleasure in dancing his little ones upon his 
knee, and in telling them tales of the wood and weald. 
Their tender fondlings, their merry laughs, their 
half-formed voices, which attempted to pronounce his 
name—all these were sweet to him. And by the love 
of those in whom he saw his own image mirrored, in 
whom his own childhood appeared to live again, he was 
drawn closer and closer to his wife. She became his 
counsellor and friend; she softened his rugged man- 
ners; she soothed his fierce wrath; she pleaded for the 
prisoners and captives, and the men condemned to die. 
And when he was absent, she became the sovereign lady 
of the house, ruled the vassals, sat in the judgment-seat, 
and oiten defended the castle in a siege. A charge so 
august could not but elevate the female mind. Women 
became queens. The Lady was created. Within the 
castle was formed that grand manner of gentleness 
mingled with hauteur, which art can never simulate, 
and which ages of dignity can alone confer. 

The barons dwelt apart from one another, and were 
often engaged in private war. Yet they had sons to 
educate and daughters to marry; and so a singular kind 
of society arose. The king’s house or court, and the 
houses of the great barons, became academies to which 
the inferior barons sent their boys and girls to school. 
The young lady became the attendant of the Dame, 
and was instructed in the arts of playing on the vir- 
ginals, of preparing simples, and of healing wounds; of 
spinning, sewing, and embroidery. The young gentle- 
man was at first a Page. He was taught to manage a 
horse with grace and skill, to use bow and sword, to 
sound the notes of venerie upon the horn, to carve at 
table, to ride full tilt against the quintaine with his 
lance in rest, to brittle a deer, to find his way through 
the forest by the stars in the sky and by the moss upor 


CHIVALRY 271 


the trees. It was also his duty to wait upon the ladies 
who tutored his youthful mind in other ways. He was 
trained to deport himself with elegance; he was nur- 
tured in all the accomplishments of courtesy and love. 
He was encouraged to select a mistress among the dames 
or demoiselles; to adore her in his heart, to serve her 
with patience and fidelity, obeying her least commands; 
to be modest in her presence; to be silent and discreet. 
The reward of all this devotion was of no ethereal kind, 
but it was not quickly or easily bestowed; and vice 
almost ceases to be vice when it can only be gratified by 
means of long discipline in virtue. When the page had 
arrived at a certain age, he was clad in a brown frock; 
a sword was fastened to his side, and he obtained the 
title of Esquire. He attended his patron knight on mili- 
tary expeditions, until he was old enough to be ad- 
mitted to the order. Among the ancient Germans of the 
forest, when a young man came of age, he was solemnly 
invested with shield and spear. The ceremony of 
knighthood at first was nothing more. Every man of 
gentle birth became a knight, and then took an oath 


* to be true to God and to the ladies and to his plighted 


word; to be honourable in all his actions, to succour the 
oppressed. Thus, within those castle-colleges arose the 
sentiment of Honour, the institution of Chivalry, which, 
as an old poet wrote, made women chaste and men brave. 
The women were worshipped as goddesses, the men were 
revered as heroes. Each sex aspired to possess those 
qualities which the other sex approved. Women admire, 
above all things, courage and truth; and so the men 
became courageous and true. Men admire modesty, 
virtue, and refinement; and so the women became vir- 
tuous, and modest, and refined. A higher standard of 
propriety was required as time went on: the manners 
and customs of the dark ages became the vices of a 
later period; unchastity, which had once been regarded 
as the private wrong of the husband, was stigmatised 


Zia THE SERFS 


as a sin against society; and society found a means of 
taking its revenge. At first the notorious woman was 
insulted to her face at tournament and banquet; or 
knights chalked an epithet upon her castle gates, and 
then rode on. In the next age she was shunned by her 
own sex: the discipline of social life was established as 
it exists at the present day. Though it might some- 
times be relaxed: in a vicious court, at least the ideal of 
right was preserved. But in the period of the Trouba- 
dours, the fair sinners resembled the pirates of the 
Homeric age. Their pursuits were of a dangerous, but 
not of a dishonourable nature: they might sometimes 
lose their lives; they never lost their reputation. 

We must now descend from ladies and gentlemen to 
the people in the field, who are sometimes forgotten by 
historians. The castle was built on the summit of a hill, 
and a village of serfs was clustered round its foot, 
These poor peasants were often hardly treated by their 
lords. Often they raised their brown and horny hands 
and cursed the cruel castle which scowled upon them 
from above. Humbly they made obeisance, and bitterly 
they gnawed their lips, as the baron rode down the nar- ~ 
row street on his great war-horse, which would always 
have its fill of corn, when they would starve, followed 
by his beef-fed varlets with faces red from beer, who 
gave them jeering looks, who called them by nicknames, 
who contemptuously caressed their daughters before 
their eyes. Yet it was not always thus: the lord was 
often a true nobleman, the parent of their village, the 
god-father of their children, the guardian of their hap- 
piness, the arbiter of their disputes. When there was 
sickness among them, the ladies of the castle often came 
down, bringing them soups and spiced morsels with their 
own white hands; and the castle was the home of the 
good chaplain, who told them of the happier world be- 
yond the grave. It was there also that they enjoyed 
such pleasures as they had. Sometimes they were called 


TOURNAMENT 273 


up to the castle to feast on beef and beer and in com- 
memoration of a happy anniversary of a Christian feast. 
Sometimes their lord brought home a caravan of mer- 
chants whom he had captured on the road; and while the 
strange guests were quaking for the safety of their 
bales, the people were being amused with the songs of 
the minstrels, and the tricks of the jugglers, and the 
antics of the dancing-bear. And sometimes a tourna- 
ment was held: the lords and ladies of the neighbour- 
hood rode over to the castle; turf banks were set for 
the serfs and a gallery was erected for the ladies, above 
whom sat enthroned the one who was chosen as the 
Queen of Beauty and of Love. Then the heralds 
shouted, “Love of ladies, splintering of lances! stand 
forth gallant knights; fair eyes look upon your deeds!” 
And the knights took up their position in two lines 
fronting one another, and sat motionless upon their 
horses like pillars of iron, with nothing to be seen but 
their flaming eyes. The trumpets flourished: “laissez 
aller,” cried a voice; and the knights, with their long 
spears in rest, dashed furiously against each other, and 
then plied battle-axe and sword, to the great delight and 
contentment of the populace. 

In times of war the castle was also the refuge of the 
poor, and the villagers fied behind its walls when the 
enemy drew near. They did not then reflect that it was 
the castle which had provoked the war; they viewed it 
only as a hospitable fortress which had saved their lives. 
It was therefore, in many cases, regarded by the people 
not only with awe and veneration, but also with a senti- 
ment of filial love. It was associated with their pleas- 
ures and their security. But in course of time a rival 
arose to alienate the affections, or to strengthen the 
resentment of the castle serfs. It was the Town. 

In the days of the Republic and in the first days of the 
Empire, all kinds of skilled labour were in the hands of 
slaves: in every palace, whatever was required for the 


274 THE TOWN 


household was manufactured on the premises. But be- 
fore the occupation of the Germans, a free class of arti- 
zans had sprung up, in what manner is not precisely 
known; they were probably the descendants of emanci- 
pated slaves. This class, divided into guilds and cor- 
porations, continued to inhabit the towns: they manu- 
factured armour and clothes; they travelled as pedlars 
about the country, and thus acquired wealth, which they 
cautiously concealed, for they were in complete sub- 
servience to the castle lord. They could not leave their 
property by will, dispose of their daughters in marriage, 
or perform a single business transaction without. the 
permission of their liege. But little by little their power 
increased. When war was being waged; it became need- 
ful to fortify the town; for the town was the baron’s 
estate, and he did not wish his property to be destroyed. 
When once the burghers were armed and their town 
walled, they were able to defy their lord. They ob- 
tained charters, sometimes by revolt, sometimes by pur- 
chase, which gave them the town to do with it as they 
pleased; to elect their own magistrates, to make their 
own laws, and to pay their liege-lord a fixed rent by the 
year instead of being subjected to loans, and benevo- 
lences, and loving contributions. The Roman Law, 
which had never quite died out, was now revived; the 
old municipal institutions of the Empire were restored. 
Unhappily the citizens often fought among themselves, 
and towns joined barons in destroying towns. Yet 
their influence rapidly increased, and the power of the 
castle was diminished. Whenever a town received privi- 
leges from its lord, other towns demanded that the same 
rights should be embodied in their charter, and rebelled 
if their request was refused. Trade and industry ex- 
panded; the products of the burgher enterprise and skill 
were offered in the castle halls for sale. The lady was 
tempted with silk and velvet; the lord, with chains of 
gold, and Damascus blades, and suits of Milan steel; 


ABOLITION 275 


the children clamoured for the sweet white powder 
which was brought from the countries of the East. These 
new tastes and fancies impoverished the nobles. They 
reduced their establishments; and the discarded retain- 
ers, In no sweet temper, went over to the Town. 

And there were others who went to the Town as well. 
In classical times the slaves were unable to rebel with 
any prospect of success. In the cities of Greece every 
citizen was a soldier: in Rome, an enormous army served 
as the slave police. But in the scattered castle states 
of Europe, the serfs could rise against their lords, and 
often did so with effect. And then the Town was al- 
ways a place of refuge: the runaway slave was there 
welcomed; his pursuers were duped or defied; the file 
was applied to his collar; his blue blouse was taken off; 
his hair was suffered to grow; he was made a burgher 
and a free man. Thus the serfs had often the power 
to rebel, and always the power to escape; in conse- 
quence of which they ceased to be serfs and became 
tenants. In our own times we have seen emancipation 
presented to slaves by a victorious party in the House 
of Commons, and by a victorious army in the United 
States. It has, therefore, been inferred that slavery 
in Europe was abolished in the same manner, and the 
honour of the movement has been bestowed upon the 
Church. But this is reading history upside down. The 
extinction of villeinage was not a donation but a con- 
quest: it did not descend from the court and the castle; 
it ascended from the village and the town. The Church, 
however, may claim the merit of having mitigated slav- 
ery in its worst days, when its horrors were increased 
by the pride of conquest and the hostility of race. The 
clergy belonged to the conquered people, whom they 
protected from harsh usage to the best of their ability. 
They taught as the Moslem doctors also teach, and as 
even the pagan Africans believe, that it is a pious action 
to emancipate a slave. But there is no reason to sup- 


276 THE POPE 


pose that they ever thought of abolishing slavery, and 
they could not have done so had they wished. Negro 
slavery was established by subjects of the Church in 
defiance of the Church. Religion has little power when 
it works against the stream, but it can give to streams 
a& power which they otherwise would not possess, and 
it can unite their scattered waters into one majestic 
flood. ' 

Rome was taken and sacked but never occupied by 
the barbarians. It still belonged to the Romans: it still 
preserved the traditions and the genius of empire. 
Whatever may have been the origin of British or Celtic 
Christianity, it is certain that the English were con- 
verted by the Papists; the first Archbishop of Canter- 
bury was an Italian; his converts became missionaries, 
entered the vast forests of pagan Germany, and brought 
nations to the feet of Rome. The alliance of Pepin and 
the Roman See, placed also the French clergy under the 
dominion of the Pope, who was acknowledged by Aleuin, 
the adherent of Charlemagne, to be the “Pontiff of 
God, vicar of the apostles, heir of the father, prince of 
the Church, guardian of the only dove without stain.” 

The ordinance of clerical celibacy increased the ef- 
ficacy of the priesthood and the power of the Pope. The 
ranks of the clergy were recruited, generation after gen- 
eration, from the most intelligent of the laymen in the 
lower classes, and from those among the upper classes 
who were more inclined to intellectual pursuits than to 
military life. These men, divided as they were from 
family connections, ceased to be Germans, Englishmen, 
or Frenchmen, and became catholic or universal hearted 
men, patriots of religion, children of the Church. And 
those enthusiastic laymen who had adopted an ascetic 
isolated life, or had gathered together in voluntary as- 
sociations; those hermits and monks, who might have 
been so dangerous to the Established Church, were wel- 
comed as allies. No mean jealousy in the Roman Church 


THE MONKS 277 


divided the priest and the prophet, as among the ancient 
Jews; the mollah and the dervish, as in the East at the 
present time. The monks were allowed to preach, and 
to elect their own monastery priests; they were grad- 
ually formed into regular orders, and brought within 
the discipline of ecclesiastic law. The monks of the 
East, who could live on a handful of beans, passed their 
lives in weaving baskets, in prayer and meditation. But 
the monks of the West, who lived in a colder climate, 
required a different kind of food; and as at first they 
had no money, they could obtain it only by means of 
work. They laboured in the fields in order to live; and 
that which had arisen from necessity was continued as 
a part of the monastic discipline. There were also 
begging friars, who journeyed from land to land. These 
were the first travellers in Europe. Their sacred char- 
acter preserved. their lives from all robbers, whether 
noble or plebeian, and the same exemption was accorded 
to those who put on the pilgrim’s garb. The smaller pil- 
grimage was that to Rome; the greater that to the Holy 
Land, by which the palmers obtained remission of their 
sins, and also were shown by the monks of Egypt, Sinai, 
and Palestine, many interesting relics, and vestiges 
of supernatural events. They were shown the barns 
which Joseph had built, vulgarly called the Pyramids; 
the bush which had burnt before Moses and was not 
consumed, and cleft out of which he peeped at the 
“back parts” of Jehovah; the pillar of salt which was 
once Lot’s wife, and which, though the sheep continually 
licked it out of shape, was continually restored to its 
pristine form; the ruins of the temple which Samson 
overthrew; the well where Jesus used to draw water for 
his mother when he was a little boy, and where she 
used to wash his clothes; the manger in which he was 
born, and the table on which he was circumcised; the 
caves in which his disciples concealed themselves dur- 
ing the crucifixion, and the cracks in the ground pro- 


278 THE HOLY LAND 


duced by the earthquake, produced by that event; the 
tree on which Judas hanged himself, and the house in 
which he resided, which was surrounded by the Jews 
with a wall that it might not be injured by the Chris- 
tians. 

It was not only the rich who undertook this pil- 
grimage; many a poor man begged his way to the Holy 
Land. When such a person was ready to depart, the 
village pastor clad him in a cloak of coarse black serge, 
with a broad hat upon his head, put a long staff in his 
hand, and hung round him a scarf and scrip. He was 
conducted to the borders of the parish in solemn pro- 
cession, with cross and holy water; the neighbours 
parted from him there with tears and benedictions. He 
returned with cockle shells stitched in his hat, as a sign 
that he had been across the seas, and with a branch of 
palm tied on to his staff, as a sign that he had been to 
Jerusalem itself. He often brought also relics and 
beads; a bag of dust to hang at the bedside of the sick; 
a phial of oil from the lamp which hung over the Holy 
Sepulchre, and perhaps a splinter of the true cross. 

When the Saracens conquered Palestine and Egypt, 
they did not destroy the memorials of Jesus, for they 
reverenced him as a prophet. Pious Moslems made also 
the pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and the Christians were 
surprised and edified to see the turbaned infidels remov- 
ing their sandals like Moses on Mount Sinai, and pros- 
trating themselves upon the pavement before the tomb. 
The caliphs were sufficiently enlightened to encourage 
and protect the foreign enthusiasts who filled the land 
with gold; and although the palmers were exempt from 
‘nassage” and “pontage,” and other kinds of black-mail 
levied by the barons on lay travellers, they found it 
more easy and more safe to travel in Asia than in Eu- 
rope. The passion for the pilgrimage of Palestine, 
which had gradually increased since the days of Helena, 
and Jerome, burst forth as an epidemic at the close of 


THE CRUSADES 279 


the tenth century. The thousand years assigned in 
Revelations as the lifetime of the earth were about to 
expire. It was believed that Jesus would appear in 
Jerusalem, and there hold a grand assize: thousands be- 
stowed their property upon the Church, and crowded 
to the Holy Land. 

While they thus lived at Jerusalem and waited for the 
second coming, continually looking up at the sky and 
expecting it to open, there came instead, a host of men 
_ with yellow faces and oblique slit-shaped eyes, who took 
the Holy City by assault, drove the Arabs out of Syria, 
killed many pilgrims, stripped them of all their money, 
and if they found none outside their bodies, probed 
them with daggers, or administered emetics in the hope 
of finding some within. When the pilgrims returned, 
they related their sufferings, and showed their scars, 
The anger of Christendom was aroused. A crusade was 
preached, and the enthusiasm which everywhere pre- 
vailed, enabled the Church to exercise unusual powers. 
The Pope decreed that the men of the cross should be 
hindered by none. Creditor might not arrest; master 
might not detain. To those who joined the army of 
the Church, absolution was given; and paradise was 
promised in the Moslem style to those who died in the 
campaign. The tidings flew from castle to castle, and 
from town to town; there was not a land, however 
remote, which escaped the infection of the time. In 
the homely language of the monk of Malmesbury, “the 
Welshman left his hunting, the Scotch his fellowship with 
vermin, the Dane his drinking party, the Norwegian 
his raw fish.” Europe was torn up from its founda- 
tions and hurled upon Asia. Society was dissolved. 
Monks not waiting for the permission of their superiors, 
cast off their black gowns and put on the buff jerkin, 
the boots and the sword. The serf left his plough in 
the furrow, the shepherd left his flock in the field. Men 
servants and maid servants ran from the castle. Wives 


280 THE CROWN 


insisted upon going with their husbands, and if their 
husbands refused to take them, went with some one else. 
Murderers, robbers, and pirates declared that they would 
wash out their sins in pagan blood. In some cases, the 
poor rustic shod his oxen like horses, and placed his 
whole family in a cart, and whenever he came to a 
castle or a town, inquired whether that was Jerusalem. 
The barons sold or mortgaged their estates, indifferent 
about the future, hoping to win the wealth of Eastern 
princes with the sword. During two hundred years, the 
natives of Europe appeared to have no other object than 
to conquer or to keep possession of the Holy Land. 

‘The Christian knights were at length driven out of 
Asia; in the meantime, Europe was transformed. The 
kings had taken no part in the first crusades; the estates 
of the barons had been purchased partly by them, and 
partly by the burghers. An alliance was made between 
Crown and Town. The sovereignty of the castle was 
destroyed. Judges appointed by the king travelled on 
circuit through the land; the Roman law, from munici- 
pal became national; the barons became a nobility re- 
siding chiefly at the court; the middle class came into 
life. The burghers acknowledged no sovereign but the 
king: they officered. their own trainbands; they collected 
their own taxes; they were represented in a national 
assembly at the capital. New tastes came into vogue; 
both mind and body were indulged with dainty foods. 
The man of talent, whatever his station, might hope to 
be ennobled; the honour of knighthood was reserved by 
the king, and bestowed upon civilians. The spices of 
the East, the sugar of Egypt and Spain, the silk of 
Greece and the islands were no longer occasional lux- 
uries, but requirements of daily life. And since it was 
considered unworthy of a gentleman to trade, the profits 
of commerce were monopolised by the third estate. 
Education was required for mercantile pursuits; it was 
at first given by the priests who had previously taught 


THE BURGHERS 281 


laymen only to repeat the pater-noster and the credo, 
and to pay tithes. Schools were opened in the towns, 
and universities became secular. The rich merchants 
took a pride in giving their sons the best education 
that money could obtain, and these young men were not 
always disposed to follow commercial pursuits. They 
adopted the study of the law, cultivated the fine arts, 
made experiments in natural philosophy, and were often 
sent by their parents to study in the land beyond the 
Alps, where they saw something which was in itself an 
education for the burgher mind—merchants dwelling in 
palaces, seated upon thrones governing great cities, com- 
manding fleets and armies, negotiating on equal terms 
with the proudest and most powerful monarchs of the 
North. | 

Italy, protected by its mountain barrier, had not been 
so frequently flooded by barbarians as the provinces of 
Gaul and Spain. The feudal system was there estab- 
lished in a milder form, and the cities retained more 
strength. Soon they were able to attack the castle 
lords, to make them pull down their towers, and to live 
like peaceable citizens within the walls. The Emperor 
had little power; Florence, Genoa, and Pisa grew into 
powerful city states resembling those of Italy before 
the rise of ancient Rome, but possessing manufactures 
which, in the time of ancient Italy, had been confined 
to Egypt, China, and Hindostan. 

The origin of Venice was different from that of its 
sister States. In the darkest days of Italy, when a horde 
of savage Huns, with scalps dangling from the trap- 
pings of their horses, poured over the land, some citi- 
zens of Padua and other adjoining towns took refuge 
in a cluster of islands in the lagoons which were formed 
at the mouths of the Adige and the Po. From Rialto, 
the chief of these islands, it was three miles to the main- 
land; a mile and a half to the sandy breakwater which 
divided the lagoons from the Adriatic. At high water 


282 VENICE 


the islands appeared to be at sea; but when the tide 
declined, they rose up from the midst of a dark green 
plain in which blue gashes were opened by the oar. But 
even at high water the lagoons were too shallow to be 
entered by ships—except through certain tortuous and 
secret channels; and even at low water they were too 
deep to be passed on foot. Here, then, the Venetians 
were secure from their foes, like the lake-dwellers of 
ancient times. 

At first they were merely salt-boilers and fishermen, 
and were dependent on the mainland for the materials 
of life. There was no seaport in the neighbourhood to 
send its vessels for the salt which they prepared: they 
were forced to fetch everything that they required for 
themselves. They became seamen by necessity: they 
almost lived upon the water. As their means improved, 
and as their wants expanded, they bought fields and pas- 
tures on the main; they extended their commerce, and 
made long voyages. They learnt in the dock-yards of 
Constantinople the art of building tall ships; they con- 
quered the pirates of the Adriatic Sea. The princes of 
Syria, Egypt, Barbary, and Spain, were all of them 
merchants, for commerce is an aristocratic occupation 
in the East. With them the Venetians opened up a 
trade. At first they had only timber and slaves to 
offer in exchange for the wondrous fabrics and rare 
spices of the East. In raw produce Europe is no match 
for Asia. The Venetians, therefore, were driven to in- 
vent; they manufactured furniture and woollen cloth, 
armour, and glass. It is evident, from the old names of 
the streets, that Venice formerly was one great work- 
shop; it was also a great. market city. The crowds of 
pilgrims resorting to Rome to visit the tombs of the 
martyrs, and to kiss the Pope’s toe, had suggested to 
the Government the idea of Fairs which were held within 
the city at stated times. The Venetians established a 
rival fair in honour of St Mark, whose remains, revered 


THE RELIC BUSINESS 283 


even by the Moslems, had been smuggled out of Alex- 
andria in a basket of pork. They took their materials, 
like Moliére, wherever they could find them; stole the 
corpse of a Patriarch from Constantinople, and the 
bones of a saint from Milan. They made religion sub- 
servient to commerce: they declined to make commerce 
subservient to religion. The Pope forbad them to trade 
with infidels: but the infidel trade was their life. Sramo 
Veneziani poi Cristiani, they replied. The Papal 
nuncios arrived in Venice, and excommunicated two hun- 
dred of the leading men. In return they were ordered 
to leave the town. The fleets of the Venetians, like the 
Phoenicians of old, sailed in all the European waters, 
from the wheat fields of the Crimea to the ice-creeks 
of the Baltic. In that sea the pirates were at length 
extinct; a number of cities along its shores were united 
in a league. Bruges in Flanders was the emporium of 
the Northern trade, and was supplied by Venetian ves- 
sels with the commodities of the South. The Venetians 
also travelled over Europe, and established their finan- 
cial colonies in all great towns. The cash of Europe 
was in their hands; and the sign of three golden balls 
declared that Lombards lent money within. 

During the period of the Crusades, their trade with 
the East was interrupted; but it was exchanged for a 
commerce more profitable still. The Venetians in their 
galleys conveyed the armies to the Holy Land, and also 
supplied them with provisions. Besides the heavy sums 
which they exacted for such services, they made other 
stipulations. Whenever a town was taken by the Cru- 
saders, a suburb or street was assigned to the Venetians; 
and when the Christians were expelled the Moslems con- 
sented to continue the arrangement. In all the great 
Eastern cities, there was a Venetian quarter containing 
a chapel, a bath-house, and a factory, ruled over by a 
magistrate or consul. 

Constantinople, during the Crusades, had been taken 


284 THE VENETIAN TRADE 


by the Latins, with the assistance of the Venetians, and 
had been recovered by the Greeks, with the assistance 
of the Genoese. The Venetians were expelled from the 
Black Sea, but obtained the Alexandria trade. In the 
fifteenth century, the Black Sea was ruined, for its cara- 
van routes were stopped by the Turkish wars. Egypt, 
which was supplied by sea, monopolised the India trade, 
and the Venetians monopolised the trade of Egypt. 
Venice became the nutmeg and pepper shop of Europe: 
not a single dish could be seasoned, not a tankard of 
ale could be spiced, without adding to its gains. The 
wealth of that city soon became enormous; its power, 
south of the Alps, supreme. 

Times had changed since those poor fugitives first 
crept in darkness and sorrow on the islands of the wild 
lagoon, and drove stakes into the sand, and spread the 
reeds of the ocean for their bed. Around them the 
dark lone waters, sighing, soughing, and the sea-bird’s 
melancholy cry. Around them the dismal field of slime, 
the salt-and sombre plain. On that cluster of islands 
had arisen a city of surpassing loveliness and splendour. 
Great ships lay at anchor in its marble streets; their 
yards brushed sculptured balconies, and the walls of 
palaces as they swept along. Branching off from the 
great thoroughfares, bustling with commerce, magnifi- 
cent with pomp, were sweet and silent lanes of water, 
lined with summer palaces and with myrtle gardens, 
sloping downwards to the shore. In the fashionable 
quarter was a lake-like space—the Park of Venice— 
which every evening was covered with gondolas; and the 
gondoliers in those days were slaves from the East, 
Saracens or negroes, who sang sadly as they rowed, 
the music of their homes—the camel-song of the Sahara, 
or the soft minor airs of the Soudan. 

The government of Venice was a rigid aristocracy. 
Venice therefore has no Santa Croce; it can boast of 
few illustrious names. However, its Aldine Press and 


ARAB SPAIN 285 


its poems in colour were not unworthy contributions to 
the revival of ancient learning and the creation of mod- 
ern art. The famous wanderings of Marco Polo had 
also excited among learned Venetians a peculiar taste 
for the science of exploration. All over Europe they 
corresponded with scholars of congenial tastes, and 
urged those princes who had ships at their disposal to 
undertake voyages of enterprise and discovery. Among 
their correspondents there was one who carried out their 
ideas too well. Venice was not so much injured by the 
potentates who assembled at Cambray, as by a single 
man who lived in a lonely spot on the south-west coast 
of the Spanish peninsula. 

That country had been taken from the natives by the 
Carthaginians, from the Carthaginians by the Romans, 
from the Romans by the Goths, from the Goths by the 
Arabs and the Moors. It was the first province of the 
Holy Empire of the Caliphs to shake itself free, and 
to crown a monarch of its own. The Arabs raised Spain 
to a height of prosperity which it has never since at- 
tained; they covered the land with palaces, mosques, 
hospitals, and bridges; and with enormous aqueducts 
which, penetrating the sides of mountains, or sweeping 
on lofty arches across valleys, rivalled the monuments 
of ancient Rome. The Arabs imported various tropical 
fruits and vegetables, the culture of which has departed 
with them. They grew, prepared, and exported sugar. 
They discovered new mines of gold and silver, quick- 
silver and lead. They extensively manufactured silks, 
cottons, and merino woollen goods, which they des- 
patched to Constantinople by sea, and which were thence 
diffused through the valley of the Danube over savage 
Christendom. When Italians began to navigate the 
Mediterranean, a line of ports was opened to them from 
Tarragona to Cadiz. The metropolis of this noble coun- 
try was Cordova. It stood in the midst of a fertile 
plain washed by the waters of the Guadalquivir. It was 


286 THE CONQUERED CHRISTIANS 


encircled by suburban towns; there were ten miles of 
lighted streets. The great mosque was one of the won- 
ders of the medieval world; its gates embossed with 
bronze; its myriads of lamps made out of Christian 
bells; and its thousand columns of variegated marble 
supporting a roof of richly carved and aromatic wood. 
At a time when books were so rare in Europe that the 
man who possessed one often gave it to a church, and 
placed it on the altar pro remedio anime sue, to obtain 
remission of his sins; at a time when three or four hun- 
dred parchment scrolls were considered a magnificent 
endowment for the richest monastery: when scarcely a 
priest in England could translate Latin into his mother 
tongue; and when even in Italy a monk who had picked 
up a smattering of mathematics was looked upon as a 
magician, here was a country in which every child was 
taught to read and write; in which every town pos- 
sessed a public library; in which book collecting was 
a mania; in which cotton and afterwards linen-paper 
was manufactured in enormous quantities; in which 
ladies earned distinction as poets and grammarians, and 
in which even the blind were often scholars; in which 
men of science were making chemical experiments, using 
astrolabes in the observatory, inventing flying machines, 
studying the astronomy and algebra of Hindostan. 
When the Goths conquered Spain they were re-con- 
quered by the clergy, who established or revived the 
Roman Law. But to that excellent code they added 
some special enactments relating to pagans, heretics, 
and Jews. With nations as with individuals, the child is 
often the father of the man; intolerance, which ruined 
the Spain of Philip, was also its vice in the Gothic days. 
On the other hand, the prosperity of Spain beneath the 
Arabs was owing to the tolerant spirit of that people. 
Never was a conquered nation so mercifully treated. 
The Christians were allowed by the Arab laws free ex- 
ercise of their religion. They were employed at court; 


THE REFUGEES 287 


they held office; they served in the army. The caliph 
had a body-guard of twelve thousand men, picked 
troops, splendidly equipped; and a third of these were 
Christians. But there were some ecclesiastics who 
taught their congregations that it was sinful to be tol- 
erated. There were fanatics who, when they heard the 
cry of the muezzin, “There is no God but God, and 
Mahomet is the messenger of God,’ would sign the cross 
upon their foreheads and exclaim in a loud voice, “Keep 
not thou silence, O God, for lo thine enemies make a 
tumult, and they that hate thee have lifted up the 
head;” and so they would rush into the mosque, and 
disturb the public worship, and announce that Mahomet 
was one of the false prophets whom Christ had fore- 
told. And when such blasphemers were put to death, 
which often happened on the spot, there was an epi- 
demic of martyr-suicide such as that which excited the 
wonder and disgust of the younger Pliny. And soon 
both the contumacy of the Christians and the evil pas- 
sions of the Moslems, which that contumacy excited, 
were increased by causes from without. When Spain 
had first been conquered, a number of Gothic nobles, too 
proud to submit on any terms, retreated to the Asturias, 
taking with them the sacred relics from Toledo. They 
found a home in mountain ravines clothed with chestnut 
woods, and divided by savage torrents foaming and 
gnashing on the stones. Here the Christians established 
a kingdom, discovered the bones of a saint which at- 
tracted pilgrims from all parts of Europe, and were 
joined from time to time by foreign volunteers, and by 
the disaffected from the Moorish towns. 

The Caliph of Cordova was a Commander of the 
Faithful: he united the spiritual and temporal powers 
in his own person: he was not the slave of Mamelukes 
or Turkish guards. But he had the right of naming 
his successor from a numerous progeny, and this custom 
gave rise, as usual, to seraglio intrigue and civil war. 


288 THE INVADERS 


The empire broke up into petty states, which were en- 
gaged in continual feuds with one another. Thus the 
Christians were enabled to invade the Moslem territory 
with success. At first they made only plundering 
forays; next they took castles by surprise or by storm 
and garrisoned them strongly; and then they began 
slowly to advance upon the land. By the middle of the 
ninth century they had reached the Douro and the Ebro. 
By the close of the eleventh they had reached the Tagus 
under the banner of the Cid. In the thirteenth century 
the kingdom of Granada alone was left. But that king- 
dom lasted two hundred years. Its existence was pre- 
served by causes similar to those which had given the 
Christians their success. Portugal, Arragon, Leon, and 
Castile, were more jealous of one another than of the 
Moorish kingdom. Granada was unagegressive; and at 
the same time it belonged to the European family. 
There was a difference in language, religion, and domes- 
tic institutions between Moslem and Christian Spain; 
yet the manners and mode of thought in both countries 
were the same. The cavaliers of Granada were ac- 
knowledged by the Spaniards to be “gentlemen, though 
Moors.” The Moslem knight cultivated the sciences of 
courtesy and music, fought only with the foe on equal 
terms, esteemed it a duty to side with the weak and to 
succour the distressed, mingled the name of his mistress 
with his Allah Akbar! as the Christians cried, Ma Dame 
et mon Dieu! wore in her remembrance an embroidered 
scarf or some other gage of love, mingled with her in 
the graceful dance of the Zambra, serenaded her by 
moonlight as she looked down from the balcony. Gra- 
nada was defended by a cavalry of gallant knights, and 
by an infantry of sturdy mountaineers. But it came 
to its end at last. The marriage of Ferdinand and 
Isabella united all the crowns of Spain. After eight 
centuries of almost incessant war, after three thousand 
seven hundred battles, the long crusade was ended; 


THE HILL OF TEARS 289 


Spain became once more a Christian land; and Boabdil, 
pausing on the Hill of Tears, looked down for the last 
time on the beautiful Alhambra, on the city nestling 
among rose gardens, and the dark cypress waving over 
Moslem tombs. His mother reproached him for weeping 
as a woman for the kingdom he had not defended as a 
man. He rode down to the sea and crossed over into 
Africa. But that country also was soon to be invaded 
by the Christians. 

That part of the Peninsula which is called Portugal 
preserved its independence and its dialect from the en- 
croachments of Castile. While the kingdom of Granada 
was yet alive, the Portuguese monarch having driven 
the Moors from the banks of the Tagus, resolved to pur- 
sue them into Africa. He possessed an excellent crusade 
machinery, and naturally desired to apply it to some 
purpose. In Portugal were troops of military monks, 
who had sworn to fight with none but unbelievers. In 
Portugal were large revenues granted or bequeathed for 
that purpose alone. In Portugal the passion of chivalry 
was at its height; the throne was surrounded by knights 
panting for adventure. It is related that some ladies of 
the English court had been grossly insulted by certain 
cavaliers, and had been unable to find champions to 
redress their wrongs. An equal number of Portuguese 
knights at once took ship, sailed to London, flung down 
their gauntlets, overthrew their opponents in the lists, 
and returned to Lisbon, having received from the in- 
jured ladies the tenderest proof of their gratitude and 
esteem. 

It seems that already there had risen between Portu- 
gal and England that diplomatic friendship which has 
lasted to the present day. A commerce of wine for wool 
was established between the ports of the Tagus and the 
Thames; and with this commerce the pirates of Ceuta 
continually interfered. Ceuta was one of the pillars of 
Hercules: it sat opposite Gibraltar, and commanded the 


290 HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 


straits. The King of Portugal prepared a fleet; great 
war-galleys were built having batteries of mangonels 
or huge crossbows, with winding gear, stationed in the 
bow; great beams, like battering rams, swung aloft; 
and jars of quicklime and soft soap to fling in the facesi 
of the enemy. The fleet sailed forth, rustling with flags, 
beating drums, and blowing Saracen horns; the passage 
to Ceuta was happily made; the troops were landed, and 
the pirate city taken by assault. 

Among those who distinguished themselves in this 
exploit was the Prince Henry, a younger son of the king. 
He was not only a brave knight, but also a distin- 
guished scholar; his mind had been enriched by a study 
of the works of Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, and by the 
Latin translations of the Greek geographers. He now 
stepped on that mysterious continent which had been 
closed to Christians for several hundred years. He ques- 
tioned the prisoners respecting the interior. They de- 
scribed the rich and learned cities of Morocco: the Atlas 
mountains, shining with snow; and the sandy desert on 
their southern side. It was there the ancients had sup- 
posed all life came to an end. But now the Prince re- 
ceived the astounding intelligence, that beyond the 
Sahara was a land inhabited entirely by negroes; covered 
with fields of corn and cotton; watered by majestic 
rivers, on the banks of which rose cities as large as 
Morocco, or Lisbon, or Seville. In that country were 
gold mines of prodigious wealth; it was also a granary of 
slaves. By land it could be reached in a week from 
Morocco by a courier mounted on the swift dromedary 
of the desert, which halted not by day or night. There 
were regular caravans or camel-fleets, which passed to 
and fro at certain seasons of the year. The Black 
Country, as they called it, could also be reached by sea. 
If ships sailed along the desert shore towards the south, 
they would arrive at the mouths of wide rivers, which 
flowed down from the gold-bearing hills. 


DHE LIBRARY 291 


This conversation decided Prince Henry’s career. To 
discover this new world beyond the desert became the 
object of his life) He was Grand Master of the Order 
of Christ, and had ample revenues at his disposal; and 
he considered himself justified in expending them on 
this enterprise which would result in the conversion of 
many thousand pagans to the Christian faith. He re- 
tired to a castle near Cape St Vincent, where the sight 
of the ocean continually inflamed his thoughts. It was 
a cold, bleak headland, with a few juniper trees scat- 
tered here and there: all other vegetation had been 
withered by the spray. But Prince Henry was not 
alone. He invited learned men from all countries to 
reside with him. He established a court, in which 
weather-beaten pilots might discourse with German 
mathematicians and Italian cosmographers. He built 
an observatory, and founded a naval school. He col- 
lected a library, in which might be read the manuscript 
of Marco Polo, which his elder brother had brought from 
Venice; copies on vellum of the great work of Ptolemy; 
and copies also of Herodotus, Strabo, and other Greek 
writers, which were being rapidly translated into Latin 
under the auspices of the Pope at Rome. He had also 
a collection of maps and sea-charts engraved on marble 
or on metal tables, and painted upon parchment. At a 
little distance from the castle was the harbour and town 
of Sagres, from which the vessels of the Prince went 
forth with the cross of the order painted on their sails. 

They sailed down the coast of the Sahara; on their 
right was a sea of darkness, on their left a land of fire. 
The gentlemen of the household who commanded the 
ships did not believe in the country of green trees be- 
yond the ocean of sand. Instead of pushing rapidly 
along, they landed as soon as they detected any signs of 
the natives—the old people of Masinissa and Jugurtha 
—attacked them crying, Portugal! Portugal! and hav- 
ing taken a few prisoners returned home. In every ex- 


292 THE EXPLORATION 


pedition the commander made it a point of honour to go 
a little further than the preceding expedition. Several 
years thus passed, and the Black Country had not been 
found. The Canary Islands were already known to the 
Spaniards: but the Portuguese discovered Porto Santo 
and Madeira. A ship load of emigrants was despatched 
to the former island, and among the passengers was a 
female rabbit in an interesting situation. She was 
turned down with her young ones on the island, and 
there being no checks to rabbit-population, they in- 
creased with such rapidity that they devoured every 
green thing, and drove the colonists across into Madeira. 
In that island the colonists were more fortunate; in- 
stead of importing rabbits they introduced the vine from 
Cyprus, and the sugar-cane from Sicily; and soon Ma- 
deira wine and sugar were articles of export from Lisbon 
to London and to other ports. In the meantime the ex- 
peditions to Africa became exceedingly unpopular. The 
priests declared that the holy money was being scan- 
dalously wasted on the dreams of a lonely madman. 
That castle on the Atlantic shore, which will ever be 
revered as a sacred place in the annals of mankind, was 
then regarded with abhorrence, and contempt. The 
common people believed it to be the den of a magician, 
and crossed themselves in terror when they met in their 
walks a swarthy strong-featured man, with a round 
barret cap on his head, wrapped in a large mantle, and 
wearing black buskins with gilt spurs. Often they saw 
him standing on the brink of the cliff, gazing earnestly 
towards the sea, his eyes shaded by his hand. It was 
said that on fair nights he might be seen for hours and 
hours on the tower of Babel which he had built, holding 
a strange weapon in his hands and turning it towards 
the different quarters of the sky. There was an ortho- 
dox geography at that period founded upon statements 
in the Jewish writings, and in the Fathers of the Church. 
The earth was in the centre of the universe; the sun and 


ORTHODOX GEOGRAPHY 293 


moon and the stars humbly revolving round it. Jerusa- 
lem was in the precise centre of the earth. In Eastern 
India was the Terrestrial Paradise, situated on high 
ground, and surrounded by a wall of fire, reaching to 
the sky. St Augustine, Lactantius, and Cosmas Indi- 
copleustes opposed the antipodes as being contrary to 
Scripture; and there could not be people on the other 
side of the earth, for how would they be able to see 
the Son of God descending in his glory? It was also 
generally believed that there was a torrid zone, an im- 
passable belt on both sides of the equator, which Provi- 
dence had created for the lower animals, and in which 
no man could live. It was to this fiery land that the 
Prince kept sending vessel after vessel. The Portu- 
guese did not see what would come of these expeditions 
except to make widows and orphans. “The Prince seems 
to think,” said they, “that because he has discovered 
two desert islands he has conferred a great blessing upon 
us; but we have enough uncultivated land without going 
across the seas for more. His own father, only a little 
while ago, gave land to a nobleman of Germany, on con- 
dition that he should people it with emigrants. But Dom 
Henry sends men out of Portugal instead of asking 
them in. Let us keep to the country that God has given 
us. It may be seen how much better suited those lands 
are for beasts than men by what happened with the 
rabbits. And even if there are in that unfound land as 
many people as the Prince pretends, we do not know 
what sort of people they are; and if they are like those in 
the Canaries who jump from rock to rock, and throw 
stones at Christian heads, of what use is it to conquer a 
land so barren, and a people so contemptible?” 
However, an incident occurred which produced a rev- 
olution in popular and ecclesiastic feeling. The prison- 
ers captured on the desert coast offered a ransom for 
their release; and this ransom consisted of negro slaves 
and Gold. The place where this metal first made its 


294 GOLD 


appearance was called the Golden River. It was not in 
reality a river but an arm of the sea, and the gold had 
been brought from the mines of Bambouk in the country 
of the negroes. Its discovery created an intense excite- 
ment: the priests acknowledged that it could not have 
been placed there for the use of the wild animals. Com- 
panies were formed and were licensed by the crown, 
which assigned to the Prince a fifth part of the cargoes 
returned. He himself cared little for the gold; but the 
discovery of this precious metal, of which India was 
proverbially the native land, suggested the idea that by 
following the coast of Africa the Indies might be reached 
by sea. Letters and maps which he received from his 
Venetian correspondents encouraged him in this belief, 
and he obtained without delay a Bull from the Pope 
granting to the Crown of Portugal all lands that its 
subjects might discover as far as India inclusive, with 
license to trade with infidels, and absolution for the 
souls of those that perished in these semi-commercial, 
semi-crusading expeditions. 

The practice of piracy was now partly given up: the 
Portuguese, like the Phcenicians of old, traded in one 
place and kidnapped in another. The commodities 
which they brought home were gold dust, seal skins, and 
negroes. Yet still they did not reach the negro land, 
till at last a merchant of Lagos, one time an equerry 
in the Prince’s service, knowing his old master had ex- 
ploration at heart more than trade, determined to push 
on, without loitering on the desert coast. He was re- 
warded with the sight of trees growing on the banks of 
a great river, which Prince Henry and his cosmog- 
raphers supposed to be the Nile. On one side were the 
brown men of the desert with long tangled hair, lean, 
and fierce in expression, living on milk, wandering with 
their camels from place to place. On the other side were 
large, stout, comely men with hair like wool, skins black 
as soot, living in villages and cultivating fields of corn. 


Ee a 


DISCOVERY OF THE SENEGAL 295 


The Portuguese had now discovered the coast of 
Guinea, and they were obliged to give up their preda- 
tory practices. Instead of an open plain in which 
knights habited in armour and men dressed in quilted 
cotton jackets, could fight almost with impunity against 
naked Moors, they entered rivers the banks of which 
were lined with impenetrable jungles. The negroes, 
perched in trees, shot down upon them from above, or 
attacked the ships’ boats in mid-channel with their 
swift and light canoes. The Portuguese had no fire- 
locks, and the crossbow bolt was a poor missile com- 
pared with the arrows which the negroes dipped in a 
poison so subtle that as soon as the wounded man 
drank he died, the blood bursting from his nose and ears. 
A system of barter was therefore established, and the 
negroes showed themselves disposed to trade. The Gold 
Coast was discovered: a fort and a chapel were built at 
Elmina, where a commandant was appointed to reside. 
This ancient settlement had just been ceded to the 
English by the Dutch. The ships carried out copper 
bracelets, brass basins, knives, rattles, looking-glasses, 
coloured silks, and woollen goods, green Rouen cloth, 
coral, figured velvet, and dainty napkins of Flanders 
embroidered with gold brocade, receiving chiefly gold 
dust in exchange. This trade was farmed out to a com- 
pany for five years, on condition that the company 
should each year explore to a certain distance along 
the coast. 

The excitement which followed the discovery of gold 
dust, and the institution of the House of Mines, grad- 
ually died away. The noble Prince Henry was no more. 
The men who went out to the coast were not of the class 
who devote their lives to the chivalry of enterprise. An 
official who had just returned from Elmina being pre- 
sented to the King, His Majesty asked him how it was 
that although he had lived in Africa his face and hands 
were so white. The gentleman replied that he had worn 


296 COLUMBUS 


a mask and gloves during the whole period of his ab- 
sence in that sultry land; upon which the king told him 
what he thought he was fit for in words too vigorous 
to be translated. This same king, John the Second, was 
a vigorous-minded man, and in him the ambition of 
Prince Henry was revived. He found in a chest belong- 
ing to the late king a series of letters from a Venetian 
gentleman giving. much information about the India 
trade, and earnestly advising him to prosecute his ex- 
plorations along the coast. The librarians of St Mark 
had also sent maps in which the termination of the 
continent was marked. The king sent out new expedi- 
tions and fostered the science of nautical astronomy. 
A Jew named Zacuto and the celebrated Martin Behem 
improved the mariner’s compass and modified the old 
Alexandrian astrolabe, so that it might be used at sea. 
Wandering knights from distant lands volunteered for 
these expeditions, desiring to witness the tropical storms 
and the strange manners of the New World, as it was 
called. Many skilful mariners and pilots visited Lisbon, 
were encouraged to remain, and became naturalized 
Portuguese. Among these was the glorious Christopher 
Columbus, who made more than one voyage to the Gold 
Coast, married a Portuguese lady, and lived for some 
time in the Azores. It was his conviction that the 
eastern coast of Asia could be reached by sailing due 
west across the ocean. It was his object not to discover 
a new land, but to reach by sea the country which 
Marco Polo had visited by land. He eventually sailed 
with letters to the Emperor of China in his pocket, and 
came back from the West India islands thinking that 
he had been to Japan. He made his proposals in the 
first place to the king, who referred it to a council of 
learned men. There were now two plans for sailing to 
India before the court: the one by following the African 
coast, the other by sailing west across the ocean. But 
expeditions of all kinds were at that time unpopular in 


COVILHAM 297 


Lisbon. The Guinea trade did not pay, and it was 
strenuously urged at the council that the West African 
Settlements should be abandoned. The friends of ex- 
ploration were obliged to stand on the defensive. They 
could not carry the proposal of Columbus; it was all 
that they could do to save the African expeditions. 
But when Columbus had won for Castile the east coast 
of Asia (as was then supposed), the king perceived that 
if he wished to have an Indian empire he must set to 
work at once. He accordingly conducted the naval 
expeditions with such vigour that the Cape of Storms 
was discovered, was then called the Cape of Good Hope, 
and was then doubled, though without immediate result, 
the sailors forcing their captain to return. The king 
also sent a gentleman, named Covilham to visit the 
countries of the East by land. His instructions were to 
trace the Venetian trade in drugs and spices to its 
source, and to find out Prester John. 

Covilham went to Alexandria in the pilgrim’s garb, 
but instead of proceeding to the Holy Land, he passed 
on to Aden, and sailed round the Indian Ocean or the 
Green Sea, that Lake of Wonder with the precious 
ambergris floating on its waters and pearls strewed 
upon its bed, whitened with the cotton sails of the 
Arab vessels, of the Guzerat Indians, and even of the 
Chinese, whose four-masted junks were sometimes to be 
seen lying in the Indian harbours with great wooden 
anchors dangling from their bows. The east coast of 
Africa, as low down as Madagascar, or the Island of the 
Moon, was lined with large towns in which the Arabs 
resided as honoured strangers, or in which they ruled as 
kings. On this coast Covilham obtained information re- 
specting the Cape. He then crossed over to the India 
shore; he sailed down the coast of Malabar from city 
to city, and from port to port. He was astounded and 
bewildered by what he saw: the activity and grandeur 
of the commerce; the magnificence of the courts; the 


298 INDIA 


half-naked kings blazing with jewels, saying their 
prayers on rosaries of precious stones, and using golden 
goblets as spittoons; the elephants with pictures drawn 
in bright colours on their ears, and with jugglers in 
towers on their backs; the enormous temples filled with 
lovely girls; the idols of gold with ruby eyes; the houses. 
of red sandal wood; the scribes who wrote on palm 
leaves with iron pens; the pilots who took observations 
with instruments unknown to Europeans; the huge 
bundles of cinnamon or cassia in the warehouses of the 
Arab merchants; the pepper vines trailing over trees; 
and drugs, which were priceless in Europe, growing in 
the fields like corn. 

He returned to Cairo, and there found two Jews, 
Rabbi Abraham and Joseph the Shoemaker, whom the 
king had sent to look after him. To them he gave a 
letter for the king, in which he wrote that “the ships 
which sailed down the coast of Guinea might be sure 
of reaching the termination of the Continent by keeping 
on to the South; and that when they arrived in the 
Eastern ocean, they must ask for Sofala and the Island 
of the Moon.” 

Covilham himself did not return. He had accom- 
plished one part of his mission; he had traced the Vene- 
tian commerce to its source; but he had now to find 
out Prester John. 

A fable had arisen, in the dark ages, of a great Chris- 
tian king in Central Asia; and when it was clearly 
ascertained that the Grand Khan was not a Christian, 
and that none of the Tartar princes could possibly be 
Christians, as they could not keep Lent, having no fish 
or vegetables in their country, it was hoped that Prester 
John, as the myth was called, might be found elsewhere. 
Certain pilgrims were met with at Jerusalem who were 
almost negroes in appearance. Their baptism was of 
three kinds—of fire, of water, and of blood: they were 
sprinkled, they were circumcised, they were seared on 


PRESTER JOHN 299 


the forehead with a red-hot iron in the form of a cross. 
Their king, they said, was a good Christian and a hater 
of the Moslems, and was descended from the Queen of 
Sheba. This swarthy king, the ancestor of Theodore, 
could be no other than Prester John; and Covilham felt 
it his duty to bear him the greetings of his master be- 
fore he went home to enjoy that reputation which he 
had so gloriously earned, and to take a part in the 
great discoveries that were soon to be made. 

But the King of Abyssinia wanted a tame white man. 
He gave his visitor wife and lands; he treated him with 
honour; but he would not let him go. This kind of com- 
plimentary captivity is a danger to which African 
travellers are always exposed. It is the glory and pride 
of a savage king to have a white man at his court. And 
so Covilham was detained, and he died in Abyssinia. 
But he lived to hear that Portugal had risen in a few 
years to be one of the great European powers, and that 
the flag he loved was waving above those castles and 
cities which he had been the first of his nation to behold. 
His letter arrived at the same time as the ship of Dias, 
who had doubled the Cape. The king determined that 
a final expedition should be sent, and that India should 
be reached by sea. , 

It was a féte day in Lisbon. The flags were flying 
on every tower; the fronts of the houses were clothed 
in gorgeous drapery, which swelled and floated in the 
wind; stages were erected on which mysteries were per- 
formed; bells were ringing, artillery boomed. Marble 
balconies were crowded with ladies and cavaliers, and 
out of upper windows peeped forth the faces of girls, 
who were kept in semi-Oriental seclusion. Presently the 
sound of trumpets could be heard; and then came in 
view a thousand friars, who chanted a litany, while 
behind them an immense crowd chanted back in re- 
sponse. At the head of this procession rode a gentle- 
man richly dressed; he was followed by a hundred and 


300 VASCO DA GAMA 


forty-eight men in sailors’ clothes, but bare-footed, and 
carrying tapers in their hands. On they went till they 
reached the quay where the boats, fastened to the shore, 
swayed to and fro with the movement of the tide, and 
strained at the rope as if striving to depart. The sailors 
knelt. A priest of venerable appearance stood before 
them, and made a general confession, and absolved them 
in the form of the bull which Prince Henry had ob- 
tained. Then the wives and mothers embraced their 
loved ones whom they bewailed as men about to die. 
And all the people wept. And the children wept also, 
though they knew not why. 

Thirty-two months passed, and again the water-side 
was crowded, and the guns fired, and the bells rung. 
Again Vasco da Gama marched in procession through 
the streets; and behind him walked, with feeble steps, 
but with triumph gleaming in their eyes, fifty-five men 
—the rest were gone. But in that procession were not 
only Portuguese, but also men with white turbans and 
brown faces; and sturdy blacks, who bore a chest which 
was shown by their straining muscles to be of enormous 
weight; and in his hand the Captain-General held a 
letter which was written with a pen of iron on a golden 
leaf, and which addressed the king of Portugal and 
Guinea in these words: “Vasco da Gama, a gentleman 
of thy house, came to my country, of whose coming I 
was glad. In my country there is plenty of cinnamon, 
cloves, pepper, and precious stones. The things which 
I am desirous to have out of thy country are silver, 
gold, coral, and scarlet.” 

That night all the houses in Lisbon were illuminated; 
the gutters ran with wine; the skies, for miles round, 
were reddened with the light of bonfires. The king’s 
men brought ten pounds of spices to each sailors’ wife, 
to give away to her gossips. The sailors themselves 
were surrounded by crowds, who sat silent and open- 


LISBON REJOICES 301 


mouthed, listening to the tales of the great waters and 
the marvellous lands where they had been. 

They told of the wonders of the Guinea coast, and 
of the men near the Cape, who rode on oxen and played 
sweet music on the flute; and of the birds which looked 
like geese, and brayed like donkeys, and did not know 
how to fly, but put up their wings like sails, and scudded 
along before the wind. They told how as they sailed 
on towards the south, the north star sank and sank, and 
erew fainter and fainter, until at last it disappeared; 
and they entered a new world, and sailed beneath 
strange skies; and how, when they had doubled the 
‘Cape, they again saw sails on the horizon, and the north 
star again rose to view. They told of the cities on the 
Eastern shore, and of their voyage across the Indian 
ocean, and of that joyful morning when, through the 
erey mists of early dawn, they discerned the hills of 
Calicut. 

And then they sank their voices, and their eyes grew 
grave and sad as they told of the horrors of the voyage; 
of the long long nights off the stormy Cape when the 
wind roared, and the spray lashed through the rigging, 
and the waves foamed over the bulwarks, and the stones 
that were their cannon-shot crashed from side to side, 
and the ships like live creatures groaned and creaked, 
and hour after hour, the sailors were forced to labour 
at the pumps till their bones ached, and their hands 
were numbed by cold. They told of treacherous pilots 
in the Mozambique, who plotted to run their ships 
ashore; and of the Indian pirates, the gipsies of the 
sea, who sent their spies on board. They told of that 
new and horrible disease which, when they had been 
long at sea, made their bodies turn putrid and the teeth 
drop from their jaws. And as they told of those things, 
and named the souls who had died at sea, there rose a 
cry of lamentation, and widows in new garments fled 
weeping from the crowd. 


302 MAJESTIC CRIME 


That night, the Venetian ambassador sat down and 
wrote to his masters that he had seen vessels enter 
Lisbon harbour laden with spices and with India drugs. 
His next letter informed them that a strong fleet was 
being prepared, and that Vasco da Gama intended to 
conquer India. The Venetians saw that they were 
ruined. They wrote to their ally, the Sultan of Egypt, 
and implored him to bestir himself. They gave him 
artillery to send to the India princes. They offered to 
open the Suez canal at their own expense, that their 
ships might arrive in the Indian ocean before the Por- 
tuguese. On the other hand, came the terrible Albu- 
querque, who told the Sultan to beware, or he would 
destroy Mecca and Medina, and turn the Nile into the 
Red Sea. The Indian Ocean became a Portuguese lake. 
There was scarcely a town upon its shores which had 
not been saluted by the Portuguese bombardiers. Not 
a vessel could cross its waters without a Portuguese 
passport. As a last resource, the Venetians offered to 
take the India produce off the king’s hands, and to give 
him a fair price. This offer was declined, and Lisbon, 
instead of Venice, became the market-place of the India 
trade. The great cities on the Euphrates, the Tigris, 
and the Nile, fell into decay; the caravan trade of 
Central Asia declined; the throne of commerce was 
transferred from the basin of the Mediterranean to the 
basin of the Atlantic; and the Oceanic powers, though 
rigidly excluded from the commerce itself, were greatly 
benefited by the change. They had no longer to sail 
through the straits of Gibraltar; Lisbon was almost at 
their doors. 

The achievements of the Portuguese were stupen- 
dous—for a time. They established a chain of forts all 
down the Western coast of Africa, and up the East 
coast to the Red Sea; then round the Persian Gulf, 
down the coast of Malabar, up the coast of Coromandel, 
among the islands of the Archipelago, along the shores 


THE POET’S GROTTO 303. 


of Siam and Birmah to Canton and Shanghai. With 
handfuls of men they defeated gigantic armies; with 
petty forts they governed empires. But from first to 
last they were murderers and robbers, without foresight, 
without compassion. Our eyes are at first blinded to 
their vices by the glory of their deeds; but as the light 
fades, their nakedness and horror are revealed. We 
read of Arabs who had received safe conducts, and who 
made no resistance, being sewed up in sails and cast 
into the sea, or being tortured in body and mind by 
hot bacon being dropped upon their flesh; of crocodiles 
being fed with live captives for the amusement of the 
soldiers, and being so well accustomed to be fed that 
whenever a whistle was given, they raised their heads 
above the water. We read of the wretched natives 
taking refuge with the tiger of the jungle and the 
panther of the hills; of mothers being forced to pound 
their children to death in the rice mortars, and of other 
children being danced on the point of spears, which it 
was said was teaching the young cocks to crow. The 
generation of heroes passed away; the generation of 
favourites began. Courtiers accepted offices in the 
Indies with the view of extorting a fortune from the 
natives as rapidly as could be done. It was remarked 
that humanity and justice were virtues which were 
always left behind at the Cape of Good Hope by pas- 
sengers for India. It was remarked that the money 
which they brought home was like excommunicated 
money, so quickly did it disappear. And as for those 
who were content to love their country and to serve 
their king, they made enemies of the others, and were 
ruined for their pains. Old soldiers might be seen in 
Lisbon wandering through the streets in rags, dying in 
the hospitals, and crouched before the palace which they 
had filled with gold. Men whose names are now wor- 
shipped by their countrymen were then despised. Minds 
which have won for themselves immortality were dark- 


304. THE SCRAMBLE FOR COLONIES 


ened by sorrow and disgrace. In the island of Macao, 
on the Chinese coast, there is a grove paved with soft 
green velvet paths, and roofed with a dome of leaves 
which even the rays of a tropical sun cannot pierce 
through. In the midst is a grotto of rocks, round which 
the roots of gigantic trees clamber and coil; and. in that 
silent hermitage a poor exile sat and sang the glory 
of the land which had cast him forth. That exile was 
Camoens; that song was the Lusiad. 

The vast possessions of the Spaniards and Portuguese 
were united under Philip the Second, who. closed the 
port of Lisbon against the heretical and rebellious na- 
tives of the Netherlands. The Dutch were not a people 
to undertake long voyages out of curiosity, but when 
it became necessary for them in the way of business to 
explore unknown seas they did so with effect. Since 
they could not get cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and 
cloves at Lisbon, they determined to seek them in the 
lands where they were grown. The English followed 
their example, and so did the French. There was for 
a long period incessant war within the tropics. At last 
things settled down. In the West and East Indies the 
Spaniards and Portuguese still possessed an extensive 
empire; but they no longer ruled alone. The Dutch, the 
English, and the French, obtained settlements in North 
America and the West India Islands, in the peninsula of 
Hindostan, and the Indian Archipelago; and also on the 
coast of Guinea. 

West Africa is divided by nature into pastoral regions, 
agricultural regions, and dense forest mountains, or dis- 
mal swamps, where the natives remain in a savage and 
degraded state. The hills and fens are the slave pre- 
serves of Africa, and are hunted every year by the 
pastoral tribes, with whom war is a profession. The 
captives are bought by the agricultural tribes, and are 
made to labour in the fields. This indigenous slave 


THE SLAVE TRADE 305 


trade exists at the present time, and has existed during 
hundreds of years. . 

The Tuaricks or Tawny Moors inhabiting the Sahara 
on the borders of the Soudan, made frequent forays into 
that country for the purpose of obtaining slaves, exacted 
them as tribute from conquered chiefs, or sometimes 
bought them fairly with horses, salt, and woollen 
clothes. When Barbary was inhabited by rich and 
luxurious people, such as the Carthaginians, who on one 
occasion bought no less than five thousand negroes for 
their galleys, these slaves must have been obtained in 
prodigious numbers, for many die in the middle passage 
across the desert, a journey which kills even a great 
number of the camels that are employed. The negroes 
have at all times been highly prized as domestic and 
ornamental slaves, on account of their docility and their 
singular appearance. They were much used in ancient 
Egypt, as the monumental pictures show: they were 
articles of fashion both in Greece and Rome. Through- 
out the middle ages they were exported from the East 
Coast to India and Persia, and were formed into regi- 
ments by the Caliphs of Bagdhad. ‘The Venetians 
bought them in Tripoli and Tunis, and sold them to the 
Moors of Spain. When the Moors were expelled, the 
trade still went on; negroes might still be seen in the 
markets of Seville. The Portuguese discovered the 
slave-land itself, and imported ten thousand negroes 
a-year before the discovery of the New World. The 
Spaniards, who had often negro slaves in their posses- 
sions, set some of them to dig in the mines at St 
Domingo: it was found that a negro’s work was as much 
as four Indians’, and arrangements were made for im-~- 
porting them from Africa. When the Dutch, the 
English, and the French obtained plantations in Amer- 
ica, they also required negro labour, and made settle- 
ments in Guinea in order to obtain it. Angola fed the 
Portuguese Brazil; Elmina fed the Dutch Manhattan; 


306 THE COAST 


Cape Coast Castle fed Barbadoes, Jamaica, and Vir- 
ginia; the Senegal fed Louisiana and the French Antilles; 
even Denmark had an island or two in the West Indies, 
and a fort or two upon the Gold Coast. The Spaniards 
alone having no settlements in Guinea, were supplied by 
a contract or Assiento, which at one time was enjoyed 
by the British crown. We shall now enter into a more 
particular description of this trade, and of the coast on 
which it was carried on. 

Sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar, on the left 
hand for some distance is the fertile, country of Morocco, 
watered by streams descending from the Atlas range. 
Then comes a sandy shore, on which breaks a savage 
surf; and when that is passed, a new scene comes to 
view. The ocean is discoloured; a peculiar smell is 
detected in the air; trees appear as if standing in the 
water; and small black specks, the canoes of fishermen, 
are observed passing to and fro. 

The first region, Senegambia, still partakes of the 
desert character. With the exception of the palm and 
the gigantic Adansonia, the trees are for the most part 
stunted in appearance. The country is open, and is 
clothed with grass, where antelopes start up from their 
forms like hares. Here and there are clumps of trees, 
and long avenues mark the water courses, which are 
often dry, for there are only three months’ rain. The 
interior abounds with gum-trees, especially on the bor- 
ders of the desert. The people are Mahometans, fight 
on horseback, and dwell in towns fortified with walls 
and hedges of the cactus. In this country the French 
are masters, and have laid the foundations of a military 
empire; an Algeria on a smaller scale. 

But as we pass towards the south, the true character 
of the coast appears. A mountain wall runs parallel 
with the sea, and numberless rivers leap down the hill 
slopes, and flow towards the Atlantic through forest- 
covered and alluvial lands, which they themselves have 


THE BIGHTS 307 


formed. These rivers are tidal, and as soon as the salt 
water begins to mingle with the fresh, their banks are 
lined with mangrove shrubberies, forming an intricate 
bower-work of stems, which may be seen at low water 
encrusted with oysters, thus said by sailors to grow on 
trees. ‘The mountain range is sometimes visible as a 
blue outline in the distance; or the hills, which are 
shaped like an elephant’s back, draw near the shore: 
or rugged spurs jut down with their rocks of torn and 
tilted granite to the sea. The shore is sculptured into 
curves; and all along the coast runs a narrow line of 
beach, sometimes dazzling white, sometimes orange yel- 
low, and sometimes a deep cinnamon red. 

This character of coast extends from Sierra Leone 
to the Volta, and includes the ivory coast, the pepper 
coast, and the gold coast. Then the country again 
flattens; the mountain range retires and gives place to 
a gigantic swamp, through which the Niger debouches 
by many mouths into the Bight of Benin, where, ac- 
cording to the old sailor adage, “few come out, though 
many go in.” It is indeed the unhealthiest region of 
an unhealthy coast. A network of creeks and lagoons 
unite the various branches of the Niger, and the marshes 
are filled with groves of palm oil-trees, whose yellow 
bunches are as good as gold. But in the old day the 
famous red oil was only used as food, and the sinister 
name of the Slave Coast indicates the commodity which 
it then produced. 

Again the hills approach the coast, and now they 
tower up as mountains, The Peak of Cameroons is 
situated on the line; it is nearly as high as the Peak 
of Teneriffe; the flowers of Abyssinia adorn its upper 
sides, and on its lofty summit the smoke of the volcano 
steals mist-like across a sheet of snow. 

A little lower down, the primeval forest of the 
Gorilla Country resembles that of the opposite Brazil; 


308 DAHOMEY 


but is less gorgeous in its vegetation, less abundant in 
its life. : 

Farther yet to the south, and a brighter land ap- 
pears. We now enter the Portuguese province of 
Angola. The land, far into the interior, is covered 
with farm-houses and coffee plantations, and smiling 
fields of maize. San Paolo de Loanda is still a great 
city, though the colony has decayed; though the con- 
vents have fallen into ruin, though oxen are stalled in 
the college of the Jesuits. Below Angola, to the Cape 
of Good Hope, is a waterless beach of sand. The West 
Coast of Africa begins with a desert inhabited by 
Moors; it ends with a desert inhabited by Hottentots. 

‘In the last century, a trifling trade was done in 
ivory and gold; but these were only accessories; the 
Guinea trade signified the trade in slaves. At first the 
Europeans kidnapped the negroes whom, they met on 
the beach, or who came off to the ships in their canoes; 
but the “treacherous natives” made reprisals; the prac- 
tice was, therefore, given up, and the trade was con- 
ducted upon equitable principles. It was found that 
honesty was the best policy, and that it was cheaper to 
buy men than to steal them. Besides the settlements 
which were made by Europeans, there were many native 
ports upon the Slave Coast, and of these, Whydah, the 
seaport of Dahomey, was the most important. When a 
slave vessel entered the roads, it fired a gun, the people 
crowded down to the beach, the ship’s boat landed 
through an ugly surf, and the skipper made his way to 
a large tree in the vicinity of the landing-place, where 
the governor of the town received him in state, and re- 
galed him with trade-gin, by no means the most agree- 
able of all compounds. The capital was situated at a 
distance of sixty miles, and the captain would be carried 
there in a hammock, taking with him some handsome 
silks and other presents for the king. This monarch 
lived by hunting his neighbours and by selling them to 


THE AMAZONS 309 


Europeans. There was a regular war-season, and he 
went out once a year, sometimes in one direction, some- 
times in another. Kings in Africa have frequently a 
bodyguard of women. A certain king of Dahomey had 
developed this institution into female regiments. These 
women are nominally the king’s wives; they are in 
reality old maids—the only specimens of the class upon 
the continent of Africa; they are excellent soldiers— 
hardy, savage, and courageous. In the siege of Abbeo- 
kuta, the other day, an Amazon climbed up the wall; 
her right arm was cut clean off, and as she fell back, 
she pistolled a man with her left. When the king re- 
turned from his annual campaign, he sent to all the 
white men at Whydah, who received the special title of 
the “king’s friends,” and invited them up to witness his 
“customs” and to purchase his slaves. In the first 
place, the king murdered a number of his captives to 
send to his father as tokens of regard; and the traders 
were mortified to see good flesh and blood being wasted 
on religion. However, slaves were always in abun- 
dance. They were also obtained from the settlements 
upon the coast. The Portuguese Angola could alone 
be dignified with the name of colony. The Dutch, Eng- 
lish, and French settlements were merely fortified fac- 
tories, half castle, half shop, in which the agents lived, 
and in which the dry goods, rum, tobacco, trade powder 
and muskets, were stored. There were native traders 
who received a quantity of such goods on trust, and 
travelled into the interior till they came to a War-town. 
They then ordered so many slaves, and laid down the 
goods. The chief ordered out the militia, made a night 
march, attacked a village just before the dawn, killed 
those who resisted, carried off the rest in irons manufac- 
tured at Birmingham, and handed them over to the 
trader, who drove them down to the coast. They were 
then warehoused in the fort dungeons, or in buildings 
called “barracoons,” prepared for their reception; and 


310 THE MIDDLE PASSAGE 


as soon as a vessel was ready, they were marked and 
shipped. On board they were packed on the lower deck 
like herrings in a cask. The cargo supposed that it 
also resembled herrings, in being exported as an article 
of food. The slaves believed that all white men were 
cannibals; that the red caps of the trade were dyed 
in negro blood, and that the white soap was made of 
negro brains. So they often refused to eat; upon which 
their mouths were forced open with an instrument 
known in surgery as speculum oris, and used in cases 
of lock-jaw; and by means of this ingenious contrivance 
they breakfasted and dined against their will. Exer- 
cise also being conducive to health, they were ordered 
to jump up and down in their fetters; and if they de- 
clined to do so, the application of the cat had the desired 
effect, and made them exercise not only their limbs, but 
also their lungs, and so promoted the circulation of the 
blood and the digestion of the horse-beans on which 
they were fed. Yet such was the obstinacy of these 
savage creatures, that many of them sulked themselves 
to death; and sometimes, when indulged with an airing 
on deck, the ungrateful wretches would jump overboard, 
and, as they sank, waved their hands in triumph at 
having made their escape. On reaching the West Indies 
they were put into regular schools of labour, and grad- 
ually broken in; and they then enjoyed the advantage 
of dwelling in a Christian land. But their temporal 
happiness was not increased. If a lady put her cook 
into the oven because the pie was overdone; if a planter 
soused a slave in the boiling sugar; if the runaway was 
hunted with bloodhounds, and then flogged to pieces 
and hung alive in chains; if the poor old worn-out slave 
was turned adrift to die, the West Indian laws did not 
interfere. The slave of a planter was “his money;” it 
was only when a man killed another person’s slave that 
he was punished; and then only by a fine. It may be 
said, without exaggeration, that dogs and horses now 


A CHRISTIAN LAND 311 


receive more protection in the British dominions than 
negroes received in the last century. 

In order to understand how so great a moral revolu- 
tion has been wrought we must return for a moment 
to the middle ages. We left the burgher class in alliance 
with the kings, possessing liberal charters, making their 
own laws, levying their own taxes, commanding their 
own troops. Their sons were not always merchants like 
themselves: they invaded the intellectual dominions of 
the priests: they became lawyers, artists, and physicians. 

Then another change took place. Standing armies 
were invented, and the middle class were re-enslaved. 
Their municipal rights were taken from them; troops 
were stationed in their towns; the nobles collected round 
the king, who could now reward their loyalty with 
lucrative and honourable posts; the command of a regi- 
ment, or the administration of a province. Heavy taxes 
were imposed on the burghers and the peasants, and 
these supported the nobles and clergy who were exempt. 
Aristocracy and monarchy became fast friends, and the 
crown was protected by the thunders of the church. 

The rebellion of the German monk established an 
idol of ink and paper, instead of an idol of painted 
wood or stone; the Protestant believed that it was his 
duty to study the Bible for himself, and so education 
was spread throughout the countries of the Reformed 
Religion. A desire for knowledge became general, and 
the academies of the Jesuits were founded in self- 
defence. The enlargement of the reading class gave the 
Book that power which the pulpit once enjoyed, and in 
the hands of Voltaire the Book began to preach. The 
fallacies of the Syrian religion were exposed: and with 
that religion fell the doctrine of passive obedience and 
divine right: the doctrine that unbelievers are the ene- 
mies of God: the doctrine that men who adopt a par- 
ticular profession are invested with magical powers 
which stream into them from other men’s finger ends:, 


312 THE PHILOSOPHERS 


the doctrine that a barbarous legal code was issued viva 
voce by the Creator of the world. Such notions as these 
are still held by thousands in private life, but they no 
longer enter into the policy of states or dictate statutes 
of the realm. 

Voltaire destroyed the authority of the Church; and 
Rousseau prepared the way for the destruction of the 
Crown. He believed in a dream-land of the past, which 
had never existed: he appealed to imaginary laws of 
Nature. Yet these errors were beneficial in their day. 
He taught men to yearn for an ideal state, which they 
with their own efforts might attain; he inspired them 
with the sentiment of Liberty, and with a reverence for 
the Law of Right. Virtuous principles, abstract ideas, 
the future Deities of men were now for the first time 
lifted up to be adored. A thousand hearts palpitated 
with excitement; a thousand pens were drawn; the 
people that: slumbered in sorrow and captivity heard a 
voice bidding them arise; they strained, they struggled, 
and they burst their bonds. Jacques Bonhomme, who 
had hitherto gone on all fours, discovered to his surprise 
that he also was a biped; the world became more light; 
the horizon widened; a new epoch opened for the human 
race. 

The anti-slavery movement, which we shall now 
briefly sketch, is merely an episode in that great rebel- 
lion against authority which began in the night of the 
middle ages; which sometimes assumed the form of re- 
ligious heresy, sometimes of serf revolt; which gradually 
established the municipal cities, and raised the slave 
to the position of the tenant; which gained great vic- 
tories in the Protestant Reformation, the two English 
Revolutions, the American Revolution, and the French 
Revolution; which has destroyed the tyranny of govern- 
ments in Hurope, and which will in time destroy the 
tyranny of religious creeds. 

In the middle of the eighteenth century negro slavery, 


THE REBELLION 313: 


although it had frequently been denounced in books, 
had not attracted the attention of the English people. 
To them it was something in the abstract, something 
which was done beyond the seas. But there rose an 
Agitation which brought up its distant horrors in vivid 
pictures before the mind, and produced an outcry of 
anger and disgust. 

It had been the custom of the Virginian or West: 
Indian planter, when he left his tobacco or sugar estate 
for a holiday in England, to wear very broad hats and 
very wide trousers and to be accompanied by those 
slaves who used to bring him his coffee in the early 
morning, to brush away the blue-tailed fly from his 
siesta, and to mix him rum and water when required. 
The existence of such attendants was somewhat anom- 
alous in this island, and friends would often observe 
with a knowing air it was lucky for him that Sambo was. 
not up to English law. That law, indeed, was undefined. 
Slavery had existed in England and had died out of 
itself, in what manner and at what time no one could 
precisely say. It was, however, a popular impression 
that no man could be kept as a slave if he were once 
baptised. The planters enjoyed the same kind of repu- 
tation that the nabobs afterwards obtained: a yellow 
skin and a bad heart were at one time always associated 
with each other. The negroes were often encouraged 
to abscond, and to offer themselves before the font. 
They obtained as sponsors respectable well-to-do men, 
who declared that they would stand by their god-sons 
if it came to a case at law. The planters were in much 
distress, and in order to know the worst, went to Messrs. 
York and Talbot, the Attorney and Solicitor General for 
the time being, and requested an opinion. The opinion 
of York and Talbot was this; that slaves breathing 
English air did not become free; that slaves on being 
baptised did not become free; and that their masters 


314 HABEAS CORPUS 


could force them back to the plantations when they 
pleased. 

The planters, finding that the law was on their side, 
at once used it to the full. Advertisements appeared 
in the newspapers offering rewards for runaway slaves. 
Negroes might be seen being dragged along the streets 
in open day: they were bought and sold at the Poultry 
Compter, an old city jail. Free men of colour were 
no longer safe; kidnapping became a regular pursuit. 

There was a young man named Granville Sharp, 
whose benevolent heart was touched to the quick by the 
abominable scenes which he had witnessed more than 
once. He could not believe that such was really English 
law. He examined the question for himself, and, after 
long search, discovered precedents which overthrew the 
opinion of the two great lawyers. He published a 
pamphlet in which he stated his case; and not content 
with writing, he also acted in the cause, aiding and 
abetting negroes to escape. On one occasion a Virginian 
had disposed of an unruly slave to a skipper bound for 
the West Indies. The vessel was lying in the river; the 
unfortunate negro was chained to the mast; when Gran- 
ville Sharp climbed over the side with a writ of Habeas 
Corpus in his hand. James Somerset’s body was given 
up, and with its panting, shuddering, hopeful, fearful 
soul inside, was produced before a Court of Justice that 
Lord Mansfield might decide to whom it belonged. The 
trial was argued at three sittings, and excited much in- 
terest throughout the land. It ended in the liberation 
of the slave. 

Several hundred negroes were at once bowed out by 
their masters into the street, and wandered about, sleep- 
ing in glass-houses, seated on the door-steps of their 
former homes, weeping, and cursing Granville Sharp. 
It was resolved to do something for them, and a grant of 
land was obtained from the native chiefs at the mouth 
of the Sierra Leone River: a company was formed; four 


CLARKSON 315 


- hundred destitute negroes were sent out; and, as if there 
were no women in Africa, fifty “unfortunates” were sent 
out with them. The society of these ladies was not 
conducive to the moral or physical well-being of the 
emigrants, eighty-four of whom died before they sighted 
land, and eighty-six in the first four months after land- 
ing. The philanthropists thus produced a middle pas- 
sage at which a slave trader would have been aghast. In 
a short time the white women were dead, and the Gran- 
villes, as they are traditionally called upon the coast, 
adopted savage life. But the settlement was re-peopled 
from another source. In the American Revolutionary 
War, large numbers of negroes had flocked to the royal 
standard, attracted by the proclamations of the British 
generals. These runaway slaves were sent to Nova 
Scotia, where they soon began to complain; the climate 
was not to their taste, and they had not received the 
lands which had been promised them. They were then 
shipped off to Sierra Leone. They landed singing 
hymns, and pitched their tents on the site of the present 
town. The settlement was afterwards recruited with 
negroes in thousands out of slave ships; but the Amer- 
ican element may yet be detected in the architecture of 
the native houses and in the speech of the inhabitants. 

In the meantime the slave-trade was being actively 
discussed. Among those who felt most deeply on the 
question was Dr Peckard of St John’s College, Cam- 
bridge, who, being in 1785, Vice-Chancellor, gave as a 
subject for the Latin essay, “Anne liceat invitos in ser- 
vitutem dare?”—lIs it right to make men slaves against 
their will? 

Among the candidates was a certain bachelor of arts, 
Mr Thomas Clarkson, who had gained the prize for the 
best Latin essay the year before, and was desirous of 
keeping up his reputation. He therefore took unusual 
pains to collect materials respecting the African slave- 
trade, to which he knew Dr Peckard’s question referred. 


316 THE PRIZE ESSAY 


He borrowed the papers of a deceased friend who had 
been in the trade, and conversed with officers who had 
been stationed in the West Indies. He read Benezet’s 
Historical Account of Guinea, and was thence guided 
to the original authorities, which are contained in the 
large folios of Hakluyt and Purchas. These old 
voyages, written by men who were themselves slavers, 
contain admirable descriptions of native customs, and 
also detailed accounts of the way in which the man- 
trade was carried on. Clarkson possessed a vivid imag- 
ination and a tender heart: these narratives filled him 
with horror and alarm. The pleasure of research was 
swallowed up in the pain that was excited by the facts 
before him. It was one gloomy subject from morning 
to night. In the day-time he was uneasy; at night he 
had little rest. Sometimes he never closed his eyes from 
grief. It became not so much a trial for academical 
reputation as for the production of a work which might 
be useful to injured Africa. He always slept with a 
candle in the room that. he might get up and put down 
thoughts which suddenly occurred to him. At last he 
finished his painful task, and obtained the prize. He 
went to Cambridge, and read his essay in the Senate 
House. On his journey back to London the subject con- 
tinually engrossed his thoughts. “I became,” he says, 
“very seriously affected upon the road. I stopped my 
horse occasionally, and dismounted and walked. I fre- 
quently tried to persuade myself, in these intervals, that 
the contents of my essay could not be true. Coming in 
sight of Wades Mill, in Hertfordshire, I sat down dis- 
consolate on the turf by the road-side and held my 
horse. Here a thought came into my mind, that if the 
contents of the essay were true, it was time that some 
person should see these calamities to their end.” 

On arriving in London he heard for the first time 
of the labours of Granville Sharp and others. He de- 
termined to give up his intention of entering the Church, 


WILBERFORCE 317 


and to devote himself entirely to the destruction of the 
slave-trade. At this time a Committee was formed for 
the purpose of preparing the public mind for abolition. 
Granville Sharp, to whom more than to any other in- 
dividual the abolition of the slave-trade is due, became 
the president, and Clarkson was deputed to collect: evi- 
dence. He called on the leading men of the day, and 
endeavoured to engage their sympathies in the cause. 
His modest, subdued demeanour, the sad, almost tear- 
ful expression of his face, which the painter of his por- 
trait has fortunately seized, the earnestness and passion 
with which he depicted the atrocities of the slave-hunt 
in Africa and the miseries of the slave-hold at sea, 
secured him attention and respect from all; and among 
those with whom he spoke was one whose fame is the 
purest and the best that parlamentary history records. 

William Wilberforce was the son of a rich merchant 
at Hull, and inherited a large fortune. He went to 
Cambridge, and was afterwards elected member for his 
native city, an honour which cost him £8000. He be- 
came a member of the fashionable clubs, and chiefly fre- 
quented Brooks’, where he became a votary of faro till 
his winnings cured him of his taste for play. He soon 
obtained a reputation wn the House and the salon. 
He had an easy flow of language, and a voice which was 
melody itself. He was a clever mimic and an accom- 
plished musician. He possessed the rare arts of polished 
raillery and courteous repartee. Madame de Stael 
declared that he was the wittiest man in England. But 
presently he withdrew from her society and that of her 
friends, because It was brilliant and agreeable. He also 
took his name off all his clubs. He was travelling on the 
Continent with Pitt, who was his bosom friend, when a 
change came over him. In the days of his childhood he 
had been sent to reside with an aunt who was 4 great 
admirer of Whitefield’s preaching, and kept up a friendly 
connection with the early Methodists. He was soon in- 


318 THE AWAKENING 


fected with her ideas, and “there was remarked in him a 
rare and pleasing character of piety in his twelfth year.” 
This excited much consternation among the other mem- 
bers of his family. His mother at once came up to 
London and fetched him home. “If Billy turns Method- 
ist,” said his grandfather, “he shall not have a 
sixpence of mine.” We are informed that theatrical 
diversions, card parties, and sumptuous suppers (at the 
fashionable hour of six in the evening) obliterated these 
impressions for a time. They were not, however, dead, 
for the perusal of Doddridge’s Rise and Progress was 
sufficient to revive them. This amiable and excellent 
young man became the prey of a morbid superstition. 
Often in the midst of enjoyment his conscience told him 
that he was not in the true sense of the word a Chris- 
tian. “I laughed, I sang, I was apparently gay and 
happy, but the thought would steal across me, What 
madness is all this: to continue easy in a state in which 
a sudden call out of the world would consign me to 
everlasting misery, and that when eternal happiness is 
within my grasp.” The sinful worldling accordingly 
reformed. He declined Sunday visits; he got up earlier 
in the morning, he wrestled continually in prayer; he 
began to keep a commonplace book, serious and pro- 
fane, and a Christian duty paper. He opened himself 
completely to Pitt, and said he believed the Spirit was 
in him. Mr Pitt was apparently of a different opinion, 
for he tried to reason him out of his convictions. “The 
fact is,” says Mr Wilberforce, “he was so absorbed in 
politics that he had never given himself time for due 
reflection in religion. But amongst other things he de- 
clared to me that Bishop Butler’s work raised in his 
mind more doubts than it had answered.” Now if that 
was the character of Pitt’s intellect we must venture 
to think that the more he reflected on religion the less 
he would have believed in it. 

Superstition intensifies a man. It makes him more 


THE METHODIST 319 


of what he was before. An evil-natured person who 
takes fright at hell-fire becomes the most malevolent of 
human beings. Nothing can more clearly prove the 
natural beauty of Wilberforce’s character than the fact 
that he preserved it unimpaired in spite of his Method- — 
istic principles. It would be unjust to deny that after 
he became a Methodist he became a wiser and a better 
man. His intellect was strengthened, his affections were 
sweetened, by a faith the usual tendency of which is to 
harden the heart and to soften the head. He endeav- 
oured to control a human, and therefore sometimes irri- 
table temper; he laid down for himself the rule “to 
manifest rather humility in himself than dissatisfaction 
at others;” and so well did he succeed that a female 
friend observed, “If this is madness I hope that he will 
bite us all.” 

Yet there was a flaw in Wilberforce’s brain, or he 
could never have supposed that a man might be sent 
to hell for playing the piano. He soon showed that in 
another age he might have been an excellent Inquisitor ; 
and Inquisitors there were not less pure-hearted, not 
less benevolent in private life than Wilberforce himself. 
He desired to do something in public for the glory of 
God, and he believed it was his mission to reform the 
manners of the age. When a man of fashion was always 
a gambler, and when all the clubs in St James’ Street 
were hells; when speeches were often incoherent in the 
House after dinner; when comic songs were composed 
against Mr Pitt, not because he had a mistress, but be- 
cause he had none; when ladies called adultery ‘“‘a little 
affair;” when the Prince of Wales was 2 young man 
about town, grazing on the middle-classes, it cannot be 
questioned that, from the Royal Family downwards, 
there was room for improvement. The reader will per- 
haps feel curious to learn ‘n what manner Mr Wilber- 
force commenced his laudable but difficult crusade. He 
cbtained a Royal Proclamation for the discouragement 


320 THE COMMITTEE 


of vice and immorality; and letters from the secretaries 
of state to the lords-lieutenant, expressing his Maj- 
esty’s pleasure, that they recommend it to the justices 
throughout their several counties, to be active in the 
execution of the laws against immoralities. He also 
started a society, to assist in the enforcement of the 
Proclamation, as a kind of amateur detective corps, to 
hunt up indecent and blasphemous publications. And 
that was what he called reforming the manners of the 
age. 

Happily, the slave-trade question began to be dis- 
cussed, and Mr Wilberforce obtained a cause which was 
worthy of his noble nature. The miseries of Africa had 
long attracted his attention: even in his boyhood he 
had written on the subject for the daily journals. Lady 
Middleton, who had heard from an eye-witness of the 
horrors of slavery, had begged him to bring it before 
parliament. Mr Pitt had also advised him to take up 
the question, and he had agreed to do so whenever an 
opportunity should occur. This happened before his 
acquaintance with Clarkson, to whom he said, at their 
first interview, that abolition was a question near his 
heart. A short time after, there was a dinner at Mr 
Bennet Langton’s, at which Sir Joshua Reynolds, Bos- 
well, Windham, and himself were present. The conver- 
sation turned upon the African slave-trade, and Clarkson 
exhibited some specimens of cotton cloth manufac- 
tured by the natives in their own looms, the plant be- 
ing grown in their own fields. All the guests expressed 
themselves on the side of abolition, and Mr Wilberforce 
was asked if he would bring it forward in the House. 
He said that he would have no objection to do so when 
he was better prepared for it, providing no more proper 
person could be found. 

The Committee now went to work in earnest, and 
held weekly meetings at Mr Wilberforce’s house. 
Clarkson was sent to Bristol and Liverpool, where he 


THE GIANTS AND THE PIGMIES 321 
collected much information, though not without diffi- 
culty, and even, as he thought, danger of his life. A 
commission was appointed by the Lords of the Privy 
Council to collect evidence. It was stated by the Liver- 
pool and planter party, that not only the colonial pros- 
perity, but the commercial existence of the nation was 
at stake; that the Guinea trade was a nursery for 
British seamen; that the slaves offered for sale were 
criminals and captives who would be eaten if they were 
not bought; that the middle passage was the happiest 
period of a negro’s life; that the sleeping apartments on 
board were perfumed with frankincense; and that the 
slaves were encouraged to disport themselves on deck 
with the music and dances of their native land. On the 
other hand, the Committee proved from the muster rolls 
which Clarkson had examined, that the Guinea trade was 
not the nursery of British seamen, but its grave, and 
they published a picture of an African slaver, copied 
from a vessel which was lying in the Mersey, and cer- 
tain measurements were made, which, being put into 
feet and inches, justified the statement of a member 
in the House, that never was so much human suffering 
condensed into so small a space. 

Lord Chancellor Thurlow and two other members of 
the Cabinet were opposed to abolition, and therefore 
Mr Pitt could not make it a government measure, and 
so although it was called the battle between the giants 
and the pigmies; although Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, 
Windham, and Wilberforce, the greatest orators and 
statesmen of the day, were on one side, and the two 
members for Liverpool on the other, the brute votes 
went with the pigmies, and the bill was lost. 

But now the nation was beginning to be moved. 
The Committee distributed books, and hired columns 
in the newspapers. They sealed their letters with a 
negro in chains kneeling, and the motto, “Am I not a 
man and a brother?” Wedgwood made cameos with 


322 @Il DE BOUF 


the same design; ladies wore them in their bracelets 
or their hair-pins; gentlemen had them inlaid in gold 
on the lids of their snuff boxes. Cowper sent to the 
Committee the well-known poem, “Fleecy locks and 
black complexion,” the Committee printed it on the 
finest hot-pressed paper, folded it up in a small and 
neat form, gave it the appropriate title of “A subject 
for conversation at the tea-table,” and cast it forth by 
thousands upon the land. It was set to music, and 
sung as a street ballad. People crowded at shop win- 
dows to see the picture of the ship in which the poor 
negroes were packed like herrings in a cask. A murmur 
arose, and grew louder and louder; three hundred thou- 
Sand persons gave up drinking sugar in their tea; in- 
dignation meetings were held; and petitions were sent 
into Parliament by the ton. Everything seemed to 
show that the nation had begun to loathe the trade in 
flesh and blood, and would not be appeased till it was 
done away. And then came events which made the 
sweet words Liberty, Humanity, Equality, sound harsh 
and ungrateful to the ear: which caused those who spoke 
much of philanthropy, and eternal justice, to be avoided 
by their friends, and perhaps supervised by the police; 
which rendered negroes and emancipation a subject to 
be discussed only with sneers and shakings of the head. 

When the slave-trade question had first come up, Mr 
Pitt proposed to the French Government that the two 
nations should unite in the cause of abolition. Now 
in France the peasantry themselves were slaves; and 
the negro trade had been bitterly attacked in books 
which had been burnt by the public executioner, and 
the authors of which had been excommunicated by the 
Pope. Mr Pitt’s proposal was at once declined by the 
coterie of the (il de Beuf. In the meantime it was 
discovered that the French nation was heavily in debt; 
there was a loss of nearly five million sterling every 
year; a fact by no means surprising, for the nobles 


THE TENNIS COURT 323 


and clergy paid no taxes; each branch of trade was an 
indolent monopoly; and poor Jacques Bonhomme bore 
the weight of the court and army on his back. Chan- 
cellors of the Exchequer one after the other were ap- 
pointed, and attempted in vain to grapple with the 
difficulty. Asa last resource, the House of Commons was 
revived, that the debt of the bankrupt despotism might 
be accepted by the nation. A Parliament was opened at 
Versailles; lawyers and merchants dressed in black 
walked in the same procession, and sat beneath the same 
roof with the haughty nobles, rustling with feathers, 
shining with gold, and wearing swords upon their thighs. 
But the commoners soon perceived that they had only 
been summoned to vote away the money of the nation; 
they were not to interfere with the laws. Their de- 
bates becoming offensive to the king, the Hall in which 
they met was closed against them. They then gath- 
ered in a Tennis Court, called themselves the National 
Assembly, and took an oath that they would not dis- 
solve until they had regenerated France. Troops were 
marched into Versailles; a coup d’etat was evidently in 
the wind. And then the Parisians arose; the army re- 
fused to fight against them; the Bastille was destroyed; 
the National Assembly took the place of the il de 
Beeuf: democracy became the. Mayor of the Palace. 
A constitution was drawn up, and was accepted by the 
king. The nobility were deprived of their feudal rights; 
church property was resumed by the nation; taxes were 
imposed on the rich as well as on the poor; the peas- 
antry went out shooting every Sunday; the country gen- 
tlemen fied from their chateaux to foreign courts, where 
wars began to brew. Such was the state of affairs in 
France when Wilberforce suggested that Clarkson 
should be sent over to Paris to negotiate with the lead- 
ing members of the National Assembly. There was in 
Paris a Society called the Friends of the Blacks; Con- 
dorcet and Brissot were among its conductors. Clark- 


324 THE BANQUET 


son, therefore, was sanguine of success; but it was long 
before he could obtain a hearing. At last he was in- 
vited to dinner at the house of the Bishop of Chartres, 
that he might there meet Mirabeau and Sieyes, the Duc 
de Rochefoucauld, Pétion de Villeneuve, and Bergasse, 
and talk the matter over. But when the guests met, a 
much more interesting topic was in everybody’s mouth. 
The king at that time lived at Versailles, a little town 
inhabited entirely by his servants and his body-guards. 
The Parisians for some time had been uneasy: they 
feared that he would escape to Metz; and that civil war 
would then break out. There was a rumour of a bond 
signed by thousands of the aristocrats to fight on the 
king’s side. The Guards had certainly been doubled at 
Versailles; and a Flanders regiment had marched into 
the town with two pieces of cannon. Officers appeared 
in the streets in strange uniforms, green faced with red; 
and they did not wear the tricolour cockade which had 
already been adopted by the French nation. And while 
thus uneasy looks were turned towards Versailles, an 
incident took place which heightened the alarm. On 
October Ist a banquet had been given by the Guards 
to the officers of the Flanders regiment. The tables 
were spread in the court theatre: the boxes were filled 
with spectators. After the champagne was served, and 
the health of the Royal Family had been drunk, the 
wine and the shouting turned all heads; swords were 
drawn and waved naked in the air: the tricolour cock- 
ades were trampled under foot; the band struck up the 
tender and beautiful ballad, O Richard! O my King! 
the world is all forsaking thee! ; the Queen came in 
and walked round the tables, bowing, and bestowing 
her sweetest smiles; the bugles sounded the charge; the 
men from different regiments were brought in; all swore 
aloud that they would protect the king, as if he was 
just then in danger of his life; and some young ensigns 
carried by assault certain boxes which expressed dis- 


ST. DOMINGO 325 


sent at these proceedings. This was the subject of 
conversation at the dinner to which Clarkson was in- 
vited; and the next day the women of Paris marched 
upon Versailles; the king was taken to the Tuileries; 
and the National Assembly became supreme—under 
favour of the mob. 

After several weeks Clarkson at last received a defi- 
nite reply. The Revolution, he was told, was of more 
importance than the abolition of the slave-trade. In 
Bordeaux, Marseilles, Rouen, Nantes, and Havre, there 
were many. persons in favour of that trade. It would 
be said that abolition would be making a sacrifice to 
England. The British parliament had as yet done noth- 
ing, and people doubted the sincerity of Pitt. Mr 
Clarkson asked whether, if the question were postponed 
to the next legislation, it would be more difficult to 
carry it then than now. “The question produced much 
conversation, but the answer was unanimous—that 
people would daily more and more admire their consti- 
tution, and that by the constitution certain solid and 
fixed principles would be established, which would in- 
evitably lead to the abolition of the slave-trade; and if 
the constitution were once fairly established, they would 
not regard the murmurs of any town or province. 

Clarkson was not the only envoy who was defeated 
by the planter interest on French soil. In the flourish- 
ing colony of St Domingo there were many mulatto 
planters, free and wealthy men, but subject to degrad- 
ing disabilities. When they heard of the Revolution, 
they sent Ogé to Paris with a large sum of money as a 
present to the National Assembly, and a petition for 
equal rights. The President received him and his com- 
panions with cordiality: he bid them take courage; the 
Assembly knew no distinction between black and white; 
all men were created free and equal. But soon the 
planters began to intrigue, the politicians to prevaricate, 
and to postpone. Ogé’s patience was at last worn out; 


326 THE JACOBINS 


he declared to Clarkson that he did not care whether 
their petition was granted them or not. “We can pro- 
duce,” he said, “as good soldiers on our estates as those 
in Rearioel If we are once forced to desperate measures, 
it will be in vain to send thousands across the Atlantic 
to bring us back to our former state.” He finally re- 
turned to St Domingo, armed his slaves, was defeated 
and broken on the wheel. Then the slaves rose and 
massacred the whites, and the cause of abolition was 
tarnished by their crimes. In England the tide of 
feeling turned; a panic fell upon the land. The prac- 
tical disciples of Rousseau had formed a club in Paris, 
the members of which met in a Jacobin church, whence 
they took their name. This club became a kind of 
Caucus for the arrangement of elections, to decide the 
measures which should be brought forward in the Na- 
tional Assembly, and to preach unto all men the gospel 
of liberty, equality, fraternity. It had four hundred 
daughter societies in France; it corresponded with thou- 
sands of secret societies abroad; it had missionaries in 
the army, spies in foreign lands. It desired to create 
@ universal republic; it grew in power, in ambition, and 
in bravado; it cast at the feet of the kings of Europe 
the head of a king; it offered the friendship and aid of 
France to all people who would rise against their 
tyrants. Tom Paine, who used to boast that he had 
created the American Revolution with his pamphlet, 
Common Sense, now tried to create an English revolu- 
tion with his Rights of Man. In the loyal towns his 
efigy, with a rope round his neck, was flogged with a 
cart whip, while the market-bell tolled, and the crowd 
sung the national anthem, with three cheers after each 
verse. In other towns, No King! Liberty! Equality! were 
scribbled on the walls. The soldiers were everywhere 
tampered with, and the king was mobbed. Pitt, the 
projector of Reform Bills became a tyrant. Burke, the 
champion of the American Revolution became a Tory. 


TOM PAINE Bal 


It was not a time to speak of abolition, which was 
regarded as a revolutionary measure. And such in 
reality it was, though accidentally associated in Eng- 
land with religion and philanthropy, on account of the 
character of its leaders. It was pointed out that the 
atheist philosophers had all of them begun by sympa- 
thising with the negroes; one of Tom Paine’s first pro- 
ductions was an article against slavery. The committee 
was declared to be a nest of Jacobins, their publications 
were denounced as poisonous. There was a time when 
the king had whispered at a levee, ‘“‘How go on your 
black clients, Mr Wilberforce?” But now the philan- 
thropist was in disgrace at court. At this time poor 
Clarkson’s health gave way, and he was carried off the 
field. And then from Paris there came terrible news; 
the people were at last avenged. The long black night 
was followed by a blood-red dawn. The nobles who 
had fled to foreign courts had returned with foreign 
troops; the kings of Europe had fallen on the new re- 
public, the common enemy of all. The people feared 
that the old tyranny was about to be replaced, and by 
a foreign hand; they had now tasted liberty; they knew 
how sweet it was; they had learnt the joy of eating all 
the corn that they had sown; they had known what it 
was to have their own firelocks and their own swords, 
and to feel that they, the poor and hungry serfs, were the 
guardians of their native land. They had learnt to kiss 
the tricolour; to say Vive la nation! to look forward to 
a day when their boys, now growing up, might harangue 
from the Tribune, or sit upon the Bench, or grasp the 
field-marshal’s baton. And should all this be undone? 
Should they be made to return to their boiled grass and 
their stinging nettle soup? Should the days of privilege 
and oppression be restored? The nation arose and drove 
out the invaders. But there had been a panic, and it 
bore its fruits. What the Jacobins were to Pitt, the 
aristocrats were to Danton and Robespierre. Hundreds 


328 THE GUILLOTINE 


of royalists were guillotined, but then, thousands had 
plotted the overthrow of the Republic, thousands had 
intrigued that France might be a conquered land. Such 
at least was the popular belief; the massacres of Sep- 
tember, the execution of the King and Queen, were the 
result of Fear. After which, it must be owned, there 
came a period when suspicion and slaughter had become 
a habit; when blood was shed to the sound of laughter; 
when heads, greeted with roars of recognition, were 
popped out of the little national sash-window, and 
tumbled into the sawdust, and then were displayed to 
the gallery in the windows, and to the pit upon the 
square. The mere brute energy which lay at the bottom 
of the social mass rose more and more towards the top; 
and at length the leaders of the people were hideous 
beings in red woollen caps, with scarcely an idea in their 
heads or a feeling in their hearts; ardent lovers of liberty, 
it is true, and zealots for the fatherland, scarcely taking 
enough from the treasury to fill their bellies and to 
clothe their backs (Marat, when killed, had eleven- 
pence halfpenny in his possession), but mere senseless 
fanatics, who crushed that liberty which they tried to 
nurse; who governed only by the guillotine, which they 
considered a sovereign remedy for all political dis- 
orders; who killed all the great men whom the Republic 
had produced, and were finally guillotined themselves. 
The death of Robespierre closed the Revolution; the last 
mob-rising was extinguished by the artillery of Buona- 
parte. The Jacobins fell into disrepute; there was a cry 
of “Down with the Jacoquins!” stones were hurled in 
through their windows; the orators were hustled and 
beaten as they sallied forth, and the ladies who knitted 
in the gallery were chastised in a manner scarcely 
suited for adults. The age of revolutions for a time 
was past; Buonaparte became Dictator; Tom Paine 
took to drink; the English reign of terror was dispelled; 
the abolitionists again raised their voices on behalf of 


VICTORY 329 


the negro, and in 1807 the slave-trade was abolished. 
That traffic, however, was only abolished so far as 
English vessels and English markets were concerned, 
and Government now commenced a long series of nego- 
tiations with foreign powers. In course of time the 
other nations prohibited the slave-trade, and conceded 
to Great Britain the police control of the Guinea coast, 
and the Right of Search. A squadron of gunboats hov- 
ered round the mouths of rivers, or sent up boating 
expeditions, or cruised to and fro a little way out at 
sea, with a man always at the mast-head with a spy- 
glass in his hand, scanning the horizon for a sail. When 
a sail was sighted, the gunboat got up steam, bore down 
upon the vessel, ordered her to heave to, sent a boat 
on board, and overhauled her papers. If they were not 
correct, or if slaves were on board, or even if the vessel 
was fitted up in such a way as to have the appearance 
of a slaver, she was taken as a prize; the sailors were 
landed at the first convenient spot; the slaver was sold, 
and the money thereby obtained, with a bounty on each 
captured slave, was divided among the officers and crew. 
The slaves were discharged at Sierra Leone, where they 
formed themselves into various townships according to 
their nationalities, spoke their own language, elected 
their own chiefs, and governed themselves privately by 
their own laws, Opinion acting as the only method of 
coercion—a fact deserving to be noted by those who 
study savage man. However, this was only for a time. 
All these imported negroes were educated by the 
missionaries, and they now support their own church; 
the native languages and distinctions of nationality are 
gradually dying out; the descendants of naked slaves 
are many of them clergymen, artisans, shopkeepers, and 
merchants; they call themselves Englishmen, and such 
they feel themselves to be. However ludicrous it may 
seem to hear a negro boasting about Lord Nelson and 
Waterloo, and declaring that he must go home to Eng- 


330 THE SENTIMENTAL SQUADRON 


land for his health, it shows that he possesses a 
kind of emulation, which, with proper guidance, will 
make him a true citizen of his adopted country, and 
leave him nothing of the African except his skin. 

But the slave trade was not extinguished by the “sen- 
timental squadron.” ‘The slavers could make a profit 
if they lost four cargoes in every five; they could easily 
afford to use decoys. While the gunboat was giving 
chase to some old tub with fifty diseased and used up 
slaves on board, a clipper with several hundreds in her 
holds would dash out from her hiding-place among the 
mangroves, and scud across the open sea to Cuba and 
Brazil. 

It was impossible to blockade a continent; but it 
was easy to inspect estates. The negroes were pur- 
chased as plantation hands; a contraband labourer was 
not a thing to be concealed. There were laws in Cuba 
and Brazil against negro importation, but these ex- 
isted only for the benefit of the officials. The bribery 
practice was put an end to in Brazil about 1852; that 
great market was for ever closed: slavers were ruined; 
African chiefs became destitute of rum; and this branch 
of commerce began to look forlorn. Yet still Cuba cried, 
More! Gwe me more! still the profits were so large 
that the squadron was defeated and the man-supply 
obtained. Half a million of money a year, and no small 
amount of men, did that one island cost Great Britain. 
Yet still it might be hoped that even Cuba would be 
filled full in time; that the public opinion of Europe 
would act upon Madrid; that in time it would imitate 
Brazil. But in 1861 there happened an event which 
made the Cubans turn their back on Spain, and look 
with longing eyes the other way; and a beautiful vision 
uprose before their minds. They dreamt of a New 
Empire to which Cuba would belong, and to which slav- 
ery in a state of medieval beauty would be restored. 
It was only a dream; it was quickly dispelled; they 


THE COLONIES 331 


awoke to find Liberty standing at their doors; and 
_ there now she stands waiting for her time to come. 
When Great Britain was teasing the colonies into 
resistance, it was often predicted that they would not 
unite. There was little community of feeling between 
the old Dutch families of New York, the Quakers of 
Pennsylvania, the yeomen of New England, who were 
descended from Roundheads, and the country gentlemen 
of Virginia, who were descended from Cavaliers. But 
when the king closed Boston Port, and the vessels 
mouldered in the docks, and the shops were closed, and 
the children of fishermen and sailors began to cry for 
bread, the colonies did unite with one heart and one 
hand to feed the hunger of the noble town; and then 
to besiege it for its own sake, and to drive the red coats 
back into their ships. Yet when the war was over, and 
the squirrel guns had again been hung upon the wall, 
and the fire of the conflict had died out, the old jealousy 
reappeared. A loose-jointed league was tried and came 
to nought. The nation existed; the nation was in debt; 
Union could not be dispensed with. But each colony 
approached this Union as a free and sovereign state. 
If one colony had chosen to remain apart, the others 
would not have interfered; if one colony after entering 
the Union had chosen to withdraw, its right to do so 
would not have been denied. In European countries, 
republican or royal, the source of authority is the Na- 
tion; all powers not formally transferred reside with the 
Assembly or the Crown. In America, however, it was 
precisely the reverse; all powers not delivered to the cen- 
tral government were retained by the contracting states. 
At the time of the Revolution, negro slavery existed 
in the colonies without exception. But it did not enter 
the economy of Northern life. Slavery will only pay 
when labour can be employed in gangs beneath an over- 
seer, and where work can be found for a large number 
of men without cessation throughout the year. In the 


332 THE CONSTITUTION 


culture of rice, sugar, cotton, and tobacco, these con- 
ditions exist; but in corn-growing lands labour is scanty 
and dispersed, except at certain seasons of the year. 
Slaves in the North were not employed as field hands, 
but only as domestic servants in the houses of the rich. 
They could therefore be easily dispensed with; and it 
was proposed by the Northern delegates, when the Con- 
stitution was being prepared, that the African slave 
trade should at once be abolished, and that certain 
measures should be taken, with a view to the gradual 
emancipation of the negro. Upon this question Virginia 
appears to have been divided. But Georgia and the 
Carolinas at once declared that they would not have - 
the slave-trade abolished: they wanted more slaves; and 
unless this species of property were guaranteed, they 
would not enter the Union at all. They demanded that 
slavery should be recognised and protected by the Con- 
stitution. The Northerners at once gave in; they only 
requested that the words slave and slavery might not 
appear. To this the Southerners agreed, and the con- 
tract was delicately worded; but it was none the less 
stringent all the same. It was made a clause of the 
Constitution that the slave trade should not be sup- 
pressed before the year 1808. It might then be made 
the subject of debate and legislation—not before. It 
was made a clause of the Constitution, that if the slaves 
of any state rebelled, the national troops should be 
employed against them. It was made a clause of the 
Constitution, that if a slave escaped to a free state, the 
authorities of that state should be obliged to give him 
up. And lastly, slave-owners were allowed to have votes 
in proportion to the number of their slaves. Such was 
the price which the Northerners paid for nationality— 
a price which their descendants found a hard and heavy 
one to pay. The Fathers of the country ate sour grapes, 
and the children’s teeth were set on edge. 

But the Southerners had not finished yet. The 


THE SOUTH 333 


colonies possessed, according to their charters, certain 
regions in the wilderness out west, and these they de- 
livered to the nation. A special proviso was made, how- 
ever, by South Carolina and by Georgia, that at no 
future time should slavery be forbidden in the territories 
which they gave up of their own free will; and these 
territories in time became slave states. It is therefore 
evident that the South intended from the first to preserve, 
and also to extend slavery. It must be confessed that 
their policy was candid and consistent, and of a piece 
throughout. They refused to enter the Union unless 
their property was guaranteed; they threatened to with- 
draw from the Union whenever they thought that the 
guarantee was about to be evaded or withdrawn. The 
clauses contained in the Constitution were binding on 
the nation; but they might: be revoked by means of a 
constitutional amendment, which could be passed by 
the consent of three-fourths of the states. Emigrants 
continually poured into the north; and these again 
streamed out towards the west. It was evident that in 
time new states would be formed, and that the original 
slave states would be left in a minority. These states 
were purely agricultural; they had no commerce; they 
had no manufactures. Indigo, rice, and tobacco were 
the products on which they lived; and the markets for 
these were in an ugly state. The East Indies had begun 
to compete with them in rice and indigo; the demand 
for tobacco did not increase. There was a general 
languor in the south; the young men did not know what 
to do. Slavery is a wasteful and costly institution, 
and requires large profits to keep it alive; it seemed on 
the point of dying in the south, when there came a voice 
across the Atlantic crying for cotton in loud and hungry 
tones; and the fortune of the south was made. 

In the seventeenth century the town of Manchester 
was already known to fame. It was a seat of the woollen 


334 COTTON 


manufacture, which was first introduced from Flanders 
into England in the reign of Edward the Third. It 
bought yarn from the Irish, and sent it back to them 
as linen. It imported cotton from Cyprus and Smyrna, 
and worked it into fustians, vermilions, and dimities. 
In the middle of the eighteenth century the cotton in- 
dustry had become important. In thousands of cot- 
tages surrounding Manchester might be heard the rattle 
of the loom and the humming of the one-thread wheel, 
which is now to be seen only in the opera of Marta. 
Invention, as usual, arose from necessity; the weavers 
could not get sufficient thread, and were entirely at the 
mercy of the spinners. Spinning machines were accord- 
ingly invented: the water frame, the spinning Jenny, 
and the mule. And now the weavers had more thread 
than they could use, and the power loom was invented 
to preserve the equilibrium of supply and demand. 
Then steam was applied to machinery; the factory 
system was established; hundred-handed engines worked 
all the day: and yet more labourers were employed than 
had ever been employed before; the soft white 
wool was carded, spun, and woven in a trice; the 
cargoes from the East were speedily devoured; and 
now raw material was chiefly in demand. The Ameri- 
can cotton was the best in the market; but the 
quantity received had hitherto been small. The pick- 
ing out of the small black seeds was a long and tedious 
operation. A single person could not clean more than 
a pound a day. Here, then, was an opening for Yankee 
ingenuity; and Whitney invented his famous saw-gin, 
which tore out the seeds as quick as lightning with 
its iron teeth; land and slaves abounded in the South; 
the demand from Manchester became more and more 
hungry—it has never yet been completely satisfied— 
and, under King Cotton, the South commenced a new 
era of wealth, vigour, and prosperity as a slave plan- 


STATE RIGHTS 335 


tation. The small holdings were unable to compete with 
the large estates on which the slaves were marshalled 
and drilled like convicts to their work; society in the 
South soon became composed of the planters, the slaves, 
and the mean whites who were too proud to work like 
niggers, and who led a kind of gipsy life. While the 
intellect of the North was inventing machinery, opening 
new lands, and laying the foundations of a literature, the 
Southerners were devoted entirely to politics; and by 
means of their superior ability they ruled at Washington 
for many years, and almost monopolised the offices 
of state. When America commenced its national career 
there were two great sects of politicians; those who 
were in favour of the central power, and those who 
were in favour of state rights. In the course of time the 
national sentiment increased, and with it the authority 
of the President and Congress; but this centralising 
movement was resisted by a certain party at the North 
whose patriotism could not pass beyond the State House 
and the City Hall. The Southerners were invariably 
provincial in their feelings; they did not consider them- 
selves as belonging to a nation, but a league; they in- 
herited the sentiments of aversion and distrust with 
which their fathers had entered the Union; threats and 
provisoes were always on their lips. The Executive, it 
was true, was in their hands, but the House of 
Representatives belonged to the North. In the Senate 
the States had equal powers, irrespectively of size and 
population. In the Lower House the States were merely 
sections of the country: population was the standard of 
the voting power. The South had a smaller population 
than the North; the Southerners were therefore a natural 
minority, and only preserved their influence by allying 
themselves with the States’ Rights party in the North. 
The Free States were divided: the Slave States voted 
as one man. In the North politics was a question of 


336 NECK AND NECK 


sentiment, and sentiments naturally differ. In the 
South politics was a matter of life and death; their bread 
depended on cotton; their cotton depended on slaves; 
their slaves depended on the balance of power. ‘The 
history of the South within the Union is that of a people 
struggling for existence by means of political devices 
against the spirit of the nation and the spirit of the age. 
By annexation, purchase, and extension, they kept pace 
with the North in its rush towards the West. Free 
States and Slave states ran neck and neck towards the 
shores of the Pacific. The North obtained Vermont, Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and 
California. The South obtained Tennessee, Kentucky, 
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, 
Florida and Texas. Whenever a territory became a 
state, the nation possessed the power of rejecting and 
therefore of modifying its constitution. ‘The northern 
politicians made an effort to prohibit slavery in all 
new states; the South as usual threatened to secede, 
and the Union which had been manufactured by 4 
compromise was preserved by a compromise. It wag 
agreed that a line should be drawn to the Pacific along 
the parallel 36° 30’; that all the states which should 
afterwards be made below the line should be slave- 
holding: and all that were made above it should be 
free. But this compromise was not, like the compromise 
of the constitution, binding on the nation, and only to be 
set aside by a constitutional amendment. It was simply 
a parliamentary measure, and as such could be repealed 
at any future ession. However it satisfied the South; 
the North had many things to think of; and all remained 
quiet for a time. But only for a time. The mysterious 
principle which constitutes the Law of Progress produces 
similar phenomena in various countries at the same time, 
and it was such an active period of the human mind 
which produced about forty years ago a Parisian 


W. L. GARRISON 337 


Revolution, the great Reform Bill, and the American 
agitation against slavery. There was a man in a Bos- 
ton garret. He possessed some paper, pens and ink, 
and little else besides; and even these he could only use 
in a fashion of his own. He had not what is called a 
style; nor had he that rude power which can cast a 
glow on jagged sentences, and uncouth words. This 
poor garretteer, a printer in his working hours, relied 
chiefly on his type for light and shade, and had much 
recourse to capital letters, italics and notes of exclama- 
tion, to sharpen his wit, and to strengthen his tirades. 
But he had a cause, and his heart was in that cause. 
When W. L. Garrison commenced his Liberator the 
government of Georgia set a price upon his head, he 
was mobbed in his native city, and slavery was de- 
fended in Faneuil Hall itself, sacred to the memory of 
men who cared not to live unless they could be free. 
The truth was, that the Northerners disliked slavery, 
but nationality was dear to them; and they believed that 
an attack upon the “domestic institution” of the South 
endangered the safety of the Union. But the Aboli- 
tionists became a sect; they increased in numbers and in 
talent; they would admit of no compromise; they cared 
little for the country itself so long as it was stained. 
They denounced the constitution as a covenant with 
death, and an agreement with hell. No union with 
slaveholders! they cried. No union with midnight 
robbers and assassins! Hitherto the war between the 
two great sections of the country had been confined to 
politicians. The Southerners had sent their boys to 
Northern colleges and schools. Attended by a retinue 
of slaves they had passed the summer at Saratoga or 
Newport, and sometimes the winter at New York. But 
now their sons were insulted, their slaves decoyed from 
them by these new fanatics; and the South went North 
no more. Abolition societies were everywhere formed, 


338 THE PLANTATIONS 


and envoys were sent into the slave states to distribute 
abolition tracts and to publish abolition journals, and 
to excite, if they could, a St Domingo insurrection. 
The Northerners were shocked at these proceedings and 
protested angrily against them. But soon there was 
a revulsion of feeling in their minds. The wild beast 
temper arose in the South, and went forth lynching all 
it met. Northerners were flogged and even killed. 
Negroes were burnt alive. And so the meetings of 
abolitionists were no longer interrupted at the North; 
mayors and select-men no longer refused them the use 
of public halls. The sentiment of abolition was how- 
ever not yet widely spread. There were few Northerners 
who preferred to give up the Union rather than live 
under a piebald constitution, or who considered it just 
to break a solemn compact in obedience to an abstract 
law. But there now rose a strong and resolute party 
who declared that slavery might stay where it was, but 
that it must go no farther. The South must be content 
with what it had. Not another yard of slave soil should 
be added to the Union. On the other hand, the South 
could not accept such terms. Slavery extension was 
necessary for their lives. More land they must have or 
they could not exist. There was waste land in abundance 
at the South; but it was dead. Their style of agriculture 
was precisely that which is pursued in Central Africa. 
They took a tract from the wilderness and planted it 
again and again with cotton and tobacco till it gave up 
the ghost, and would yield no more. They then moved 
on and took in another piece. Obliged to spend all 
their cash in buying prime slaves at two hundred pounds 
a piece, they could not afford to use manure or to rotate 
their crops; they could not afford to employ so costly 
a species of labour on anything less lucrative than sugar, 
cotton and tobacco. Besides, if slavery were not to be 
extended they would be surrounded and hemmed in by 


THE KANSAS QUESTION 339 


free states; the old contract would be annulled. Already 

the South were in a minority. The free states and slave 
states might be equal in number; but they were not equal 
in population and prosperity. The Northerner who 
travelled down South was astonished to find that the 
cities of the maps were villages, and the villages clusters 
of log huts. Fields covered with weeds, and moss- 
grown ruins showed where farms once flourishing had 
been. He rode through vast forests and cypress swamps, 
where hundreds of mean whites lived like Red Indians, 
hunting and fishing for their daily bread, eating clay 
to keep themselves alive, prowling round plantations 
to obtain stolen food from the slaves. He saw plan- 
tations in which the labour was conducted with the 
terrible discipline of the prison and the hulks; and where 
as he galloped past the line of hoeing slaves, so close that 
he splashed them with mud, they hoed on, they toiled 
on, not daring to raise their eyes from the ground. From 
early dawn to dusky eve it was so with these poor 
wretches; no sound broke the silence of those fearful 
fields but the voice of the overseer and the cracking of 
the whip. And out far away in the lone western lands, 
by the side of dark rivers, among trees from which 
drooped down the dull grey Spanish moss, the planters 
went forth to hunt; there were well known coverts where 
they were sure to find; and as the traveller rode through 
the dismal swamp he might perhaps have the fortune 
to see the game; a black animal on two legs running 
madly for its life, and behind it the sounding of a horn, 
and the voices of hounds in full ery—a chase more in- 
fernal than that of the Wild Huntsman who sweeps 
through the forest with his spectral crew. 

But the end of all this was at hand. Kansas, a tract 
of rich prairie land, was about to become a Territory, 
and would soon become a State. It was situated above 
the 36° 30’ line, and therefore belonged to the North. 


340 REBELLION OF THE NORTH 


But the Southerners coveted this Naboth’s vineyard; 
their power at Washington was great just then; they 
determined to strike out the line which had been in the 
first place demanded by themselves. With much show 
of justice and reason they alleged that it was not fair 
to establish the domestic institutions of a country with- 
out consulting the inhabitants themselves. They pro- 
posed that, for the future, the question of slavery or 
free soil should be decided by a majority of votes among 
the settlers on the spot. This proposal became law, and 
then commenced a Race for the Soil. In Boston a poli- 
tical society was formed for the exportation to Kansas 
of Northern men. In the slave state, Missouri, blue 
lodges were formed for a similar purpose, and hun- 
dreds of squatters, dressed in flannel shirts, and huge 
boots up to their knees, and skin caps on their 
heads, bristling with revolvers and bowie knives, 
stepped across the Border. For the first time the 
people of the North and South met face to face. 
A guerilla warfare soon broke out; the New Englanders 
were robbed and driven back; they were murdered, and 
their scalps paraded by Border ruffians upon poles. 
The whole country fell into a distracted state. The 
Southerners pursued their slaves into Boston itself, 
and dragged them back, according to the law. A mad 
abolitionist invaded Virginia with a handful of men, 
shot a few peaceful citizens, and was hanged. A time 
of terror fell upon the South; there was neither liberty 
of print nor liberty of speech; the majority reigned; 
and the man who spoke against it was lynched upon the 
spot. A Southerner assaulted and battered a North- 
erner on the floor of the Senate. The North at last was 
thoroughly aroused. The people itself began to stir; a 
calm, patient, law-abiding race, slow to be moved, but 
when once moved, swerving never till the thing was done. 
A presidential election was at hand, and a Northerner 


SECESSION 341 


was placed upon the throne. The South understood 
that this was not a casual reverse, which might be 
redeemed when the four years had passed away. It 
was to them a sign that the days of their power had 
for ever passed. The temper of the North was not to 
be mistaken. It had at last rebelled; it would suffer 
tyranny no more. Mr Lincoln’s terms were concilia- 
tory in the extreme. Had the South been moderate in 
its demands, he would have been classed with those 
statesmen who added compromise to compromise, and 
so postponed the evil but inevitable day. He was not 
an abolitionist. He offered to give them any guarantee 
they pleased—a constitutional amendment if they desired 
it—that slavery as it stood should not be interfered with. 
He offered to bring in a more stringent law, by which 
their fugitive slaves should be restored. But on the 
matter of extension he was firm. The Southerners de- 
manded that a line should again be drawn to the Pacific; 
that all south of that line should be made slave soil, 
and that slavery should be more clearly recognised by 
the central government, and more firmly guaranteed. 
These terms were not more extravagant than those 
which their fathers had obtained. But times had 
changed: the sentiment of nationality was now more 
fully formed; Uncle Tom had been written; the Ameri- 
can people were heartily ashamed of slavery; they 
refused to give it another lease. The ultimatum was de- 
clined; the South seceded, and the North flew to arms, 
not to emancipate the negro, but to preserve the exist- 
ence of the nation. They would not indeed submit to 
slavery extension; they preferred disunion to such a 
disgrace. But they had no intention when they went to 
war of destroying slavery in the states where it existed; 
they even took pains to prove to the South that the war 
was not an anti-slavery crusade. The negroes were 
treated by the Northern generals not as men, but as 


342 THE RESULT 


contraband of war: even Butler in New Orleans did 
not emancipate the slaves; a general who issued a proc- 
lamation of that nature was reprimanded by the 
government, although he only followed the example of 
British generals in the Revolutionary war. But as the 
contest became more severe and more prolonged, and 
all hopes of reconciliation were at an end, slavery be- 
came identified. with the South in the Northern mind, 
and was itself regarded as a foe. The astute and 
cautious statesman at the head of affairs perceived that 
the time had come; the constitution was suspended 
during the war; and so, in all legality and with due 
form, he set free in one day four million slaves. 

It is impossible to view without compassion the mis- 
fortunes of men who merely followed in the footsteps 
of their fathers, and were in no sense more guilty than 
Washington and Jefferson, who remained slaveholders 
to their dying day. It was easy for Great Britain to 
pay twenty millions; it was easy for the Northern 
States to emancipate their slaves, who were few in 
number, and not necessary to their life. But it was im- 
possible for the South to abandon slavery. The money 
of a planter was sunk in flesh and blood. Yet the 
Southern politicians must be blamed for their crazy 
ambition, and their blind ignorance of the world. In- 
stead of preparing as the Cuban planters are preparing 
now for those changes which had been rendered inevi- 
table by the progress of mankind, they supposed that it 
was in their power to defy the Spirit of the Age, and to 
establish an empire on the pattern of ancient Rome. 
They firmly believed that, because they could not exist 
without selling cotton, Great Britain could not exist 
without buying it from them; which is like a shopkeeper 
supposing he could ruin his customers by putting up his 
shutters. It may console those who yet lament the 
Lost Cause, if we picture for their benefit what the 


THE LOST CAUSE 343 


Southern empire would have been. There would have 
been an aristocracy of planters, herds of slaves, a servile 
press, a servile pulpit, and a rabble of mean whites 
formed into an army. Abolition societies would have 
been established in the North, to instigate slaves to 
rebel or run away; a cordon of posts with a system of 
passports would have been established in the South. 
Border raids would have been made by fanatics on the 
one side, and by desperadoes on the other. Sooner or 
later there must have been a war. Filibustering ex- 
peditions on Mexico and Cuba would have brought about 
a war with Spain, and perhaps with France. It was 
the avowed intention of the planters, when once 
their empire was established, to import labour from 
Africa; to reopen the trade as in the good old times. 
But this, Great Britain would certainly have not allowed; 
and thus, again, there would have been war. Even if 
the planters would have displayed a little common-sense, 
which is exceedingly improbable, and so escaped 
extirpation from without, their system of culture would 
have eaten up their lands. But happily such hypotheses 
need no longer be discussed; a future of another kind is 
in reserve for the Southern States. America can now 
pursue with untarnished reputation her glorious career, 
and time will soften the memories of a conflict, the 
original guilt of which must be ascribed to the Founders 
of the nation, or rather to the conditions by which those 
great men were mastered and controlled. 

I have now accomplished the task which I set myself 
to do. I have shown to the best of my ability, what 
kind of place in universal history Africa deserves to 
hold. I have shown, that not only Egypt has assisted 
the development of man by educating Greece, Carthage 
by leading forth Rome to conquest, but that even the 
obscure Soudan, or land of the negroes, has also played 
its part in the drama of European life. 


344 FUTURE OF THE NEGRO 


The slave-trade must be estimated as a war; though 
cruel and atrocious in itself, it has, like most wars, been 
of service to mankind. I shall leave it to others to trace 
out in detail the influence of the negro in the Human 
Progress. It will be sufficient to observe, that the 
grandeur of West Indian commerce in the last genera- 
tion, and of the cotton manufacture at the present time, 
could not have been obtained without the assistance 
of the negro: and that the agitation on his behalf, which 
was commenced by Granville Sharp, has assisted much 
to expand the sympathies, and to educate the heart 
of the Anglo-Saxon people, who are somewhat inclined 
to pride of colour and prejudice of race. Respect- 
ing the prospects of the negro, it is difficult for 
me to form an opinion; but what I have seen of 
the Africans in their native and semi-civilised condition, 
inclines me to take a hopeful view. The negroes are 
imitative in an extraordinary degree, and imitation is 
the first principle of progress. They are vain and 
ostentatious, ardent for praise, keenly sensitive of blame. 
Their natural wants, indeed, are few; they inherit the 
sober appetites of their fathers who lived on a few 
handfuls of rice a day: but it will, I believe, be found 
that when they enjoy the same inducements to work as 
other men, when they can hope to distinguish them- 
selves in the Parliament, the pulpit, or in social life, they 
will become as we are, the slaves of an idea, and will 
work day and night to obtain something which they 
desire, but do not positively need. Whether the negroes 
are equal in average capacity to the white man, whether 
they will ever produce a man of genius, is an idle and 
unimportant question; they can at least gain their 
livelihood as labourers and artisans; they are there- 
fore of service to their country; let them have fair play, 
and they will find their right place whatever it may be. 
As regards the social question, they will no doubt, like 


FUTURE OF AFRICA 345 


the Jews, intermarry always with their own race, and 
will thus remain apart. But it need not be feared that 
they will become hostile to those with whom they reside. 
Experience has shown that, whenever aliens are treated 
as citizens, they become citizens, whatever may be their 
religion or their race. It is a mistake to suppose that 
the civilised negro calls himself an African, and pines 
to return to his ancestral land. If he is born in the 
States, he calls himself an American: he speaks with 
an American accent; he loves and he hates with an 
American heart. 

It is a question frequently asked of African travel- 
lers, What is the future of that great continent? In 
the first place, with respect to the West Coast, there 
is little prospect of great changes taking place for many 
years to come. The commerce in palm oil is import- 
ant, and will increase. Cotton will be received in large 
quantities from the Soudan. The Eastern Coast of 
Africa, when its resources have been developed, will 
be a copy of the Western Coast. It is not probable 
that European colonies will ever flourish in these gol- 
den but unwholesome lands. The educated negroes will 
in time monopolise the trade, as they can live at less 
expense than Europeans, and do not suffer from the 
climate. They may perhaps at some future day possess 
both coasts, and thence spread with bible and musket 
into the interior. This prospect, however, is uncertain, 
and in any case exceedingly remote. 

That part of Africa which lies above the parallel 
10° North, belongs to the Eastern Question. Whatever 
may be the ultimate destiny of Egypt, Algeria, and 
Morocco, will be shared by the regions of the central 
Niger, from Haussa to Timbuctoo. 

That part of the continent which lies below the 
parallel 20° South, already belongs in part, and will 
entirely belong to settlers of the ‘Anglo-Saxon race. It 


346 FUTURE OF THE EARTH 


resembles Australia, not only in its position with res- 
pect to the Equator, but also in its natural productions. 
It is a land of wool and mines, without great navigable 
rivers, interspersed with sandy deserts, and enjoying a 
wholesome though sultry air. Whatever may be the 
future of Australia, will also be the future of Southern 
Africa. 

Between these two lines intervenes a region inhabited 
for the most part by pagan savages, thinly scattered 
over swamp and forest. This concealed continent, 
this unknown world, will, at some far off day, if my 
surmises prove correct, be invaded by three civilizing 
streams; by the British negroes from the coasts; by 
the Mahometan negroes in tobe and turban from the 
great empires of the Niger region; and by the farmerg 
and graziers and miners of South Africa. 

When, therefore, we speculate on the future of Africa, 
we can do no more than bring certain regions of that 
continent within the scope of two general questions: 
the future of our colonies, and the future of the East; 
and these lead us up to a greater question still, the 
future of the European race. 

Upon this subject I shall offer a few remarks; an 
it is obvious that in order to form some conception of 
the future, it is necessary to understand the present 
and the past. I shall therefore endeavour to ascertain 
what we have been and what we are. The monograph 
of Africa is ended. I shall make my sketch of history 
complete, adding new features, passing quickly over 
the parts that have been already drawn. I shall search 
out the origin of man, determine his actual condition, 
speculate upon his future destiny, and discuss the nature 
of his relations towards that Unknown Power of whom 
he is the offspring and the slave. I shall examine this 
planet and its contents with the calm curiosity of one 
whose sentiments and passions, whose predilections and 


MATERIALS OF HISTORY 347 


antipathies, whose hopes and fears, are not interested 
in the question. I shall investigate without prejudice; 
I shall state the results without reserve. 

What are the materials of human history? What 
are the earliest records which throw light upon the 
origin of man? All written documents are things of 
yesterday, whether penned on prepared skins, papyrus 
rolls or the soft inner bark of trees; whether stamped 
on terra-cotta tablets, carved on granite obelisks, or 
engraved on the smooth surface of upright rocks. 
Writing, even in its simplest picture form, is an art 
which can be invented only when a people have become 
mature. 

The oldest books are therefore comparatively modern, 
and the traditions which they contain are either false 
or but little older than the books themselves. All 
travellers who have collected traditions among a wild 
people know how little that kind of evidence is worth. 
The savage exaggerates whenever he repeats, and in 
a few generations the legend is transformed. 

The evidence of language is of more value. It enables 
us to trace back remotely divided nations to their com- 
mon birth-place, and reveals the amount of culture, the 
domestic institutions, and the religious ideas which they 
possessed before they parted from one another. Yet 
languages soon die, or rather become metamorphosed 
in structure as well as in vocabulary: the oldest existing 
language can throw no light on the condition of 
primeval man. 

The archives of the earth also offer us their testimony: 
the graves give up their dead, and teach us that man 
existed many thousand years ago, in company with 
monstrous animals that have long since passed away; 
and that those men were savages, using weapons and 
implements of stone, yet possessing even then a taste 
for ornament and art, wearing shell bracelets, and draw- 


348 HUMAN HIEROGLYPHICS 


ing rude figures upon horns and stones. The manners 
and ideas of such early tribes can best be inferred by 
a study of existing savages. The missionary who resides 
among such races as the Bushmen of Africa or the 
Botocudos of Brazil, may be said to live in pre-historic 
times. 

But as regards the origin of man, we have only one 
document to which we can refer; and that is the body 
of man himself. There, in unmistakeable characters, 
are inscribed the annals of his early life. These 
hieroglyphics are not to be fully deciphered without 
a special preparation for the task: the alphabet of 
anatomy must first be mastered, and the student must 
be expert in the language of all living and fossil forms. 
One fact, however, can be submitted to the uninitiated 
eye, and it will be sufficient for the purpose. Look at a 
skeleton and you will see a little bone curled downwards 
between the legs, as if trying to hide itself away. That 
bone is a relic of pre-human days, and announces plainly 
whence our bodies come. We are all of us naked under 
our clothes, and we are all of us tailed under our skins. 
But when we descend to the man-like apes, we find that, 
with them as with us, the tail is effete and in disuse; and 
so we follow it downwards and downwards until we 
discover it in all its glory in the body of the fish; being 
there present, not as a relic or rudimentary organ, as 
in man and the apes; not a mere appendage, as in the 
fox; not a secondary instrument, a spare hand, as in 
certain monkeys, or a fly-flapper, as in the giraffe: but 
as a primary organ of the very first importance, endow- 
ing the fish with its locomotive powers. Again, we ex- 
amine the body of the fish, and we find in it also 
rudimentary organs as useless and incongruous as the tail 
in man; and thus we descend step by step, until we arrive 
at the very bottom of the scale. 

The method of development is still being actively dis- 


ORIGIN OF MAN 349 


cussed, but the fact is placed beyond a doubt. Since the 
“Origin of Species” appeared, philosophical naturalists 
no longer deny that the ancestors of man must be sought 
for in the lower kingdom. And, apart from the evidence 
which we carry with us in our own persons, which we 
read in the tail-bone of the skeleton, in the hair which 
was once the clothing of our bodies, in the nails which 
were once our weapons of defence, and in a hundred other 
facts which the scalpel and the microscope disclose; 
apart from the evidence of our own voices, our incoherent 
groans and cries, analogy alone would lead us to be- 
lieve that mankind had been developed from the lowest 
forms of life. For what is the history of the individual 
man? He begins life as an ambiguous speck of matter 
which can in no way be distinguished from the original 
form of the lowest animal or plant. He next becomes 
a cell; his life is precisely that of the animalcule. Cells 
cluster round this primordial cell, and the man is so far 
advanced that he might be mistaken for an undeveloped 
oyster; he grows still more, and it is clear that he might 
even be a fish; he then passes into a stage which is com- 
mon to all quadrupeds, and next assumes a form which 
can only belong to quadrupeds of the higher type. At 
last the hour of birth approaches; coiled within the dark 
womb he sits, the image of an ape; a caricature and a 
prophecy of the man that is to be. He is born, and for 
some time he walks only on all fours; he utters only 
inarticulate sounds; and even in his boyhood his fondness 
for climbing trees would seem to be a relic of the old 
arboreal life. Since, therefore, every man has been 
himself in such a state that the most experienced ob- 
server could not with the aid of the best microscopes 
have declared whether he was going to be man or plant, 
man or animalcule, man or mollusc, man or lobster, man 
or fish, man or reptile, man or bird, man or quadruped, 
man or monkey; why should it appear strange that the 


350 TAILED MINDS 


whole race has also had its animalcule and its reptile 
days? But whether it appears strange or not, the public 
must endeavour to accustom its mind to the fact which 
is now firmly established, and will never be overthrown. 

Not only are the bodies, but also the minds of man 
constructed on the same pattern as those of the lower 
animals. To procure food; to obtain a mate; and to rear 
offspring; such is the real business of life with us as it 
is with them. If we look into ourselves we discover pro- 
pensities which declare that our intellects have arisen 
from a lower form; could our minds be made visible 
we should find them tailed. And if we examine the 
minds of the lower animals, we find in them the rudi- 
ments of our talents and our virtues. As the beautiful 
yet imperfect human body has been slowly developed 
from the base and hideous creatures of the water and 
the earth, so the beautiful yet imperfect human mind 
has been slowly developed from the instincts of the lower 
animals. All that is elevated, all that is lovely in human 
nature has its origin in the lower kingdom. The philo- 
sophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, 
and that to the habit of examining all things in search 
of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey 
imitativeness. Loyalty and piety, the reverential 
virtues, are developed from filial love. Benevolence 
and magnanimity, the generous virtues, from parental 
love. The sense of decorum proceeds from the sense 
of cleanliness; and that from the instinct of sexual dis- 
play. The delicate and ardent love which can become a 
religion of the heart, which can sanctify and soften a 
man’s whole life; the affection which is so noble, and so 
pure, and so free from all sensual stain, is yet derived 
from that desire which impels the male animal to seek a 
mate; and the sexual timidity which makes the female 
flee from the male is finally transformed into that 
maiden modesty which not only preserves from vice, 


A SHABBY-GENTEEL THEORY 35d 


but which conceals beneath a chaste and honourable reti- 
cence, the fiery love that burns within; which compels 
the true woman to pine in sorrow, and perhaps to 
languish into death, rather than betray a passion that 
is not returned. 

There is a certain class of people who prefer to say 
that their fathers came down in the world through 
their own follies than to boast that they rose in the 
world through their own industry and talents. It is 
the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity 
of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they 
are degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes. In 
scientific investigations such whims and fancies must 
be set aside. It is the duty of the inquirer to ascertain 
the truth, and then to state it as decisively and as 
clearly as he can. ‘People’s prejudices’ must not be 
respected but destroyed. It may, however, be worth 
while to observe, for comfort of weak souls, that in 
these new revelations of science human nature is not in 
any way degraded. A woman’s body is not less lovely 
because it was once a hideous mass of flesh. A woman’s 
modesty is not less noble because we discover that it 
was once a mere propensity, dictated, perhaps, by the 
fear of pain. The beauty of the mind is not less real 
than the beauty of the body, and we need not be dis- 
couraged because we ascertain that it has also passed 
through its embryonic stage. It is Nature’s method 
to take something which is in itself paltry, repulsive, 
and grotesque, and thence to construct a masterpiece by 
means of general and gradual laws; those laws themselves 
being often vile and cruel. This method is applied not 
only to single individuals, but also to the whole animated 
world; not only to physical but also to mental forms. 
And when it is fully realised and understood that the 
genius of man has been developed along a line of un- 
broken descent from the simple tendencies which in- 


352 AMPHIBIOUS MANKIND 


habited the primeval cell, and that in its later stages 
this development has been assisted by the efforts of man 
himself, what a glorious futurity will open to the human 
race! It may well be that our minds have not done 
growing, and that we may rise as high above our pre- 
sent state as that is removed from the condition of the 
insect and the worm. For when we examine the human 
mind we do not_find it perfect and mature; but in a 
transitional and amphibious condition. We live be- 
tween two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep 
upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and 
the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one 
_ explanation of this fact. We are passing from the 
animal into a higher form; and the drama of this planet 
is in its second act. We shall now endeavour to place the 
first upon the stage, and then passing through the 
second, shall proceed to speculate upon the third. The 
scene opens with the Solar System. Time uncertain; 
say, a thousand million years ago. 


CHAPTER IV. 
INTELLECT. 


Tat region of the universe which is visible to mortal 
eyes has been named the solar system: it is composed 
of innumerable stars, and each star is a white hot sun, 
the centre and sovereign of a world. Our own sun is 
attended by a company of cold, dark globes, revolving 
round it in accordance with the law of gravitation; 
they also rotate like joints before the fire, turning, first 
one side, and then the other, to the central light. The 
path that is traced by the outermost planet is the limit of 
the sun’s domain, which is too extensive to be measured 
into miles. If a jockey mounted on a winner of the Derby 
had started when Moses was born, and had galloped 
ever since at full speed, he would be by this time about 
half the way across. Yet this world seems large to us, 
only because we are so small. It is merely a drop in 
the ocean of space. The stars which we see on 4 fine 
night are also suns as important as our own, and so 
vast is the distance which separates their worlds from 
ours, that a flash of lightning would be years upon the 
road. These various solar systems are not independent 
of one another; they are members of the same com- 
munity. They are sailing in order round a point to us 
unknown. Our own sun, drawing with it the planets in 
its course, is spinning furiously upon its axis, and dash- 
ing through space at four miles a second. And not 
only is the solar system an organ of one gigantic form; 
it has also grown to what it is, and may still be con- 

353 


354 THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN 


sidered in its youth. As the body of a plant or animal 
arises from a fluid alike in all its parts, so this world 
of ours was once a floating fiery cloud, a nebula or mist, 
the molecules of which were kept asunder by excessive 
heat. But the universe is pervaded by movement and 
by change; there came a period when the heat declined, 
and when the atoms obeying their innate desires rushed 
to one another, and, concentrating, formed the sun, which 
at first almost filled the solar world. But as it cooled, 
and as it contracted, and as it rotated, and as it revolved, 
it became a sphere in the centre of the world; and it cast 
off pieces which became planets, satellites, attendant 
stars, and they also cast off pieces which became satel- 
lites to them. Thus the earth is the child, and the moon 
the grandchild of the sun. When our planet first came 
out into the world it was merely a solar fragment, a 
chip of the old star, and the other planets were in a 
similar condition. But these sunballs were separated 
from one another, and from their parent form, by oceans 
of ether, a kind of attenuated air, so cold that frost 
itself is fire in comparison. The sun burning always 
in this icy air is gradually cooling down; but it parts 
slowly with its heat on account of its enormous size. Our 
little earth cooled quickly, shrank in size—it had once 
extended to the moon—and finally went out. From a 
globe of glowing gas it became a ball of liquid fire, en- 
veloped in a smoky cloud. When first we are able to re- 
store its image and examine its construction, we find 
it composed of zones or layers in a molten state, arranged 
according to their weight; and above it we find an atmos- 
phere also divided into layers. Close over the surface 
vapour of salt was suspended in the air; next, a layer 
of dark, smoky, carbonic acid gas; next, oxygen and 
nitrogen, and vapour of water or common steam. Within 
the sphere, as it cooled and changed, chemical bodies 
sprang from one another, rushed to and fro, combined 


THE EARTH 355 


with terrible explosions; while in the variegated atmos- 
phere above, gas-hurricanes arose and flung the elements 
into disorder. So sped the earth, roaring and flaming 
through the sky, leaving behind it a fiery track, sweeping 
round the sun in its oval course. Year followed year, 
century followed century, epoch followed epoch. Then 
the globe began to cool upon its surface. Flakes of 
solid matter floated on the molten sea, which rose and 
fell in flaming tides towards a hidden and benighted 
moon, The flakes caked together, and covered the ball 
with a solid sheet, which was upraised and cracked by 
the tidal waves beneath, like thin ice upon the Arctic 
seas. In time it thickened and became firm, but subter- 
ranean storms often ripped it open in vast chasms, from 
which masses of liquid lava spouted in the air, and fell 
back upon the hissing crust. Everywhere heaps of ashes 
were thus formed, and the earth was seamed with scars 
and gaping wounds. When the burning heat of the air 
had abated, the salt was condensed, and fell like snow 
upon "the earth, and covered it ten feet thick. The 
Atlantic and Pacifie oceans, lying overhead in the form 
of steam, descended in one great shower, and so the 
primeval sea was formed. It was dark, warm, and in- 
tensely salt: at first it overspread the surface of the 
globe; then volcanic islands were cast up; and as the 
earth cooled downwards to its core, it shrivelled into folds 
as an apple in the winter when its pulp dries up. These 
folds and wrinkles were mountain ranges, and continents 
appearing above the level of the sea. Our planet was 
then divided into land and water in the same proportions 
as exist at the present time. For though land is always 
changing into water, and water is always changing into 
land, their relative quantities remain the same. The air 
was black, night was eternal, illumined only by light- 
ning and volcanoes, the earth was unconscious of the 
sun’s existence; its heat was derived from the fire within, 


356 ORIGIN OF LIFE 


and was uniform from pole to pole. But the crust 
thickened; the inner heat could no longer be felt upon the 
surface; the atmosphere brightened a little, and the sun’s 
rays penetrated to the earth. From the shape, the atti- 
tude, and the revolutions of our planet, resulted an un- 
equal distribution of solar heat, and to this inequality 
the earth is indebted for the varied nature of its aspects 
and productions. .Climate was created: winds arose in 
the air; currents in the deep; the sun sucked up the 
waters of the sea, leaving the salt behind; rain-clouds 
were formed, and fresh water bestowed upon the land. 
The underground fires assisted the planet’s growth by 
transforming the soils into crystalline structures; and by 
raising the rocks thus altered to the surface; by produc- 
ing volcanic eruptions, hot springs, and other fiery phe- 
nomena. But the chief Architect and Decorator of this 
planet was the Sun. When the black veil of the earth 
was lifted, when the sunlight entered the turbid waters. 
of the primeval sea, “an interesting event” took place. 
The earth became with young. 

In water there are always floating about a multi- 
tude of specks which are usually minute fragments of 
the soil. But now appeared certain specks which, though 
they resembled the others, possessed certain properties. 
of a very peculiar kind. First, they brought forth little 
specks, precise copies of themselves: they issued their 
own duplicates. And secondly, they performed in their 
own persons an elaborate chemical operation. Imbibing 
water and air, they manufactured those elements with the 
assistance of the solar rays, into the compounds of which 
their own bodies were composed, giving back to the 
water those components which they did not require, 
And then appeared other little specks which swallowed 
up the first, and manufactured them into the com- 
pounds more complex still, of which they, the second 
comers, were composed. The first were embryonic: 
plants; the second were embryonic animals. They were 


BOTTLED SUNSHINE 357 


both alike in appearance; both repeated themselves, or 
reproduced, in the same manner. The difference between 
them was this, that the plants could live on raw air 
and water, the animals could live only on those elements 
when prepared by sunlight in the body of the plant. 
The office of vegetation upon the earth is therefore of a 
culinary nature, and the plant, when devoured, gives the 
animal that heat which is its life, just as coal (a cake of 
fossil vegetation) gives heat to the apartment in which 
it is consumed. But this heat, whether it lies hidden in 
the green and growing plant, or in its black and stony 
corpse, was at first acquired from the sun. Glorious 
Apollo is the parent of us all. Animal heat is solar 
heat; a blush is a stray sunbeam; Life is bottled sun- 
shine, and Death the silent-footed butler who draws out 
the cork. 

Those dots of animated jelly, without definite form 
or figure, swimming unconsciously in the primeval sea, 
were the ancestors of man. The history of our race 
begins with them, and continues without an interrup- 
tion to the present day; a splendid narrative, the ma- 
terials of which it is for science to discover, the glories 
of which it is for poets to portray. 

Owing to the action of surrounding forces, the outer 
parts of the original jelly-dot became harder and more 
solid than the parts within, and so it assumed the 
shape of the cell or sphere. Its food consisted of micro- 
scopic fragments of vegetable matter imbibed through 
its surface or outer rind, such portions as were not 
“made up” being expelled or excreted in the same man- 
ner as they were taken in. There was no difference of 
parts, except that the outside was solid and the inside 
soft. The creature’s body was its hand, its stomach, and 
its mouth. When it had lived a certain time it burst 
and died, liberating, as it did so, a brood of cells which 
had slowly ripened within. But sometimes these new 


358 HISTORY OF THE CELL 


cells, instead of being detached when they were born, 
remained cohering to the parent cell, thus making the 
animal consist of several cells instead of only one. In 
the first case the process is termed Reproduction; in 
the second case it is termed Growth. But the two opera- 
tions are in reality the same. Growth is coherent repro- 
duction; Reproduction is detached growth. 

Time goes on? Our animal is now a cell-republic 
enclosed by a wrapper of solidified and altered cells. 
Next, in this wrapper a further change takes place. 
It protrudes into limbs; a gaping mouth appears. The 
limbs or tentacles grasp the food and put it within the 
mouth; other limbs sprout forth and carry their owner 
from place to place. In the meantime the cells within 
are also changed; their partitions are removed; the 
many-walled apartments are converted into galleries or 
tubes, along which the food is conveyed from one part | 
of the body to another. These tubes are filled with 
blood, pumped backwards and forwards by the heart. 
The muscles which move the outer limbs are equipped 
with nerves, the movements of which are directed from 
centres in the spine and brain. The functions of life 
are thus divided, and each department has an organ of 
its own. The reproductive function is divided farther 
still. Two separate elements are formed; one prepares 
and ejects the sperm-cell which the other receives, and 
unites to the germ-cell. Ata later period in the History 
of Life this arrangement is supplanted by another, more 
complicated still. The two elements no longer co-exist in 
the same form, and thus reproduction can only be ef- 
fected by means of co-operation between two distinct 
and independent individuals. How important a fact 
is this will presently appear. 

These various inventions of Nature, so far as we have 
gone; the limbs of locomotion and prehension; the heart 
with its vessels; the brain with its nerves; and the 


DIVISION OF LABOUR 359 


separation of the sexes, all occurred in the marine period 
of the earth’s life: in the dark deep sea womb. 

Similar changes, but inferior in degree, occurred in 
the vegetable world. The shapeless specks became one- 
celled:#they were next strung together like a chain of 
beads; they then grew into sea-weed and aqueous plants, 
which floated about, and finally obtained a footing on 
the land. But they dwelt long ages on the earth before 
their sex appeared. There were no flowers in that pri- 
meval world, for the flower is a sign of love. Gigantic 
mosses and tree ferns clothed the earth, and reproduced 
themselves by scattering cells around. 

Animals followed their prey, the plants, from the 
water to the land and became adapted for terrestrial life. 
At that period the atmosphere was thickened with car- 
bonic acid gas, and was more pestilential than the 
Black Hole of Calcutta. Only reptiles, with sluggish 
and imperfect respiratory organs, could breathe in such 
an air. But that fatal gas was bread to the vegetable 
world, which took the carbon into its body, and thus 
the atmosphere was purified in time. The vast masses of 
carbon which the plants took out of the air in order 
to allow a higher class of animal to appear upon the 
stage, were buried in the earth, hardened into coal, and 
were brought in by the Author in the second act—now on. 

The coal-matter being thus removed, the air was 
bright and pure: the sun glowed with radiance and 
force; the reptiles were converted into birds and quad- 
rupeds of many kinds; insects rising from the land and 
from the water hummed and sparkled in the air: the 
forests were adorned with flowers, and cheered with song. 
And as the periods rolled on, the inhabitants of the 
earth became more complex in their structure, more 
symmetrical in form, and more advanced in mental 
power, till at last the future lord of the planet himself 
appeared upon the stage. The first act of the drama is 


360 THE VARIETY OF FORCE 


here concluded: but the division is merely artificial; in 
Nature there is no entr’acte; no curtain falls. Her scenes 
resemble dissolving views; the lower animals pass into 
man by soft, slow, insensible gradations. 

We must now consider the question, How and Why 
have these marvellous changes taken place? How and 
Why did the primeval jelly dots assume the form of the 
cell or sphere? © 

It has been already shown that continual changes 
occurred in the primeval atmosphere and in the prim- 
eval sea. These changes acting upon animal life pro- 
duced changes in its composition. For as animals are 
the result and expression of the conditions under which 
they are born, it is natural to suppose that when these 
conditions are changed, the animals should also change. 
When the conditions of life are abruptly altered and in- 
stantaneously transformed, the animals are of course 
destroyed; but when, as is usually the case, the changes 
are gradual, the animals are slowly modified into har- 
mony with the neighboring conditions. The primeval 
speck of life being acted upon by a variety of forces, be- 
came varied in its structure; and as these forces varied 
from period to period, the organisms also varied. Com- 
plexity of parts results from complexity of environment. 
Multiformity of circumstances produces multiformity of 
species. The development of animal life from the homo- 
geneous to the heterogeneous, from the simple to the com- 
plex, from uniformity to multiformity, is caused by the 
development of the Earth itself from a monotonous 
water-covered globe with one aspect, one constitution, 
and one temperature to this varied earth on which we 
dwell, where each foot of land differs in some respect 
from the one beside it. The modifications on modifica- 
tions of the animal are due to the modifications on modi- 
fications of the medium in which and on which it lived. 
And this operation of Nature is hastened and facilitated 


THE ASCENT OF TYPE 361 


by a law which in itself is murderous and cruel. The 
Earth is over-populated upon principle. Of the animals 
that are born, a few only can survive. There is not 
enough food for all; nature scrambles what there is 
among the crowd. If any animal possesses an advan- 
tage, however slight, over those with whom he competes 
in this Food-scramble or struggle for existence, he will 
certainly survive; and if he survives, then some one else, 
so gentle Nature orders it, must die. This Law of com- 
petition becomes itself a Force by developing slight 
variations along lines of utility into widely different and 
specific forms. 

But how is it that animals of the higher type pre- 
vail? Why should species, with a tendency towards 
a complicated structure, generally triumph over simple 
forms? The reason appears to be this, that whenever 
a change takes place it is almost invariably a change 
towards complexity. Now it is an ascertained law that 
animals are invigorated by a slight change; they are 
therefore improved by an approach towards complexity. 
Let us take the most mysterious of all progressive opera- 
tions—the division of the sexes. The hermaphrodite can 
fertilise itself, but its organs are so arranged that it can 
be fertilised by another individual, the wind or the water 
acting as the go-between. The offspring of such sepa- 
rate unions are always more vigorous than the home- 
born progeny of the hermaphrodite. The latter are 
therefore killed off by means of the struggle for existence, 
and sexual union, at first the exception, becomes the rule. 
Just as a body of artisans can do more work and better 
work when each man devotes his whole life to a single 
department of the craft, so it is good for the animal that 
division of labour should be established in its structure; 
that instead of the creature being its own mouth, its 
own stomach, its own organ of excretion, reproduction, 
and locomotion, it should be divided into separate parts, 


362 STATIONARY FORMS 

one of which moves it, another part takes the food, an- 
other part chews, another part digests, another part 
prepares the blood, another part pumps the blood to and 
fro, another part reproduces the species, another part: 
nourishes the young, while over all presides the Brain. 

But how is it that some animals have progressed 
while others have remained at the bottom of the scale, 
and others again have advanced only to a certain point? 
If all have grown out of such specks of animated jelly 
as are still to be found within the sea, how is it that 
some have remained throughout infinite periods of time 
unchanged; that others have remained in the form of the 
sponge, rooted upon rocks; that others, like the lobster, 
have never exchanged their jointed bodies for the more 
perfect skeleton of the fish; that some fish have taken 
to the land, and have been converted into reptiles, and 
then into birds or quadrupeds, while others have re- 
mained in the aqueous condition; and lastly, that one 
animal, namely Man, has contrived to distance all the 
others when, as it is acknowledged, they all started 
fair? 

In reply, let me ask those who admit the develop- 
ment of all civilised people from the savage state—and 
that no geologist will now deny ;—let me ask them how it 
is that Europeans have advanced (this involving a 
change in the structure of the brain), while others have 
remained in the savage state, others in the pastoral con- 
dition, others fixed at a certain point of culture, as the 
Hindoos and the Chinese? The analogy is perfect, and 
the answer is in either case the same. Those forms re- 
main stationary which are able to preserve their condi- 
tions of life unchanged. The savages of the primeval 
forest, when the game is exhausted in one region, migrate 
to another region where game exists. They remain there- 
fore in the hunting state. The shepherds of the boundless 
plains, when one pasture is devoured by their flocks, mi- 


PROGRESS AND NECESSITY 363 


grate to another pasture where they find grass and 
water in abundance. But when in a land like Egypt, the 
inhabitants are confined to a certain tract of land they 
are unable to evade the famine of food produced by the 
vicissitudes of nature and the law of population; they 
are compelled to invent in order to subsist; new modes 
of life, new powers, new desires, new sentiments arise; 
and the human animal is changed. Then a second period 
of immobility arrives; by means of despotism, caste, 
slavery, and infanticide, the statu quo is preserved. 

In the primeval sea the conditions of life were con- 
stantly changing, but its inmates could usually keep 
them constant by migration. For instance, let us 
imagine a species accustomed to dwell at the bottom 
of the sea, feeding on the vegetable matter and oxygen 
gas which come down by liquid diffusion from the waters 
of the surface. By elevation of the sea-bed, or by 
the deposit of sediment from rivers, that part of the sea 
which this species inhabits, becomes gradually shallow 
and light. The animal would migrate into deep dark 
water, and would therefore undergo no change. But 
let us suppose that it is prevented from migrating by a 
wall of rocks. It would then be exposed to light, and to 
other novel forces, and it would either change or die. 

Here progress is the result of absolute necessity, and 
such must always be the case. Animals which inhabit 
the waters have no innate desire to make acquaintance 
with the land; but it sometimes so happens that they live 
in shallow places, where they are left uncovered at low 
water for a certain time, and so, in the course of geo- 
logical periods, the species becomes amphibious in habit; 
and then the hard struggle for life in the water, with the 
abundance of food upon the land, leads them to adopt 
terrestrial life. There are creatures now existing, of whom 
it is not easy to say whether they belong to the water 
or the land: there are fishes which walk about on shore, 


364 NATURE AT WORK 


and climb trees. It is not difficult to imagine such ani- 
mals as these deserting the water, and entirely living 
upon land. 

But the development of life, in its varied aspects, 
must always remain incomprehensible to those who have 
not studied the noble science of geology, or who at least 
have not made themselves acquainted with its chief 
results. Unless the student understands what extraordi- 
nary transformation scenes have taken place upon the 
globe, all that is now land, having formerly been sea, 
and all that is now sea having formerly been land, not 
only once, but again, and again, and again; unless he 
understands that these changes have been produced by 
the same gradual, and apparently insignificant causes, 
as those which are now at work before our eyes; the sea 
gnawing away the cliff upon the shore; the river carrying 
soil to the sea; the glacier gliding down the mountain 
slope; the iceberg bearing huge boulders to mid ocean; 
the coralline insects building archipelagoes; the internal 
fires suddenly spouting forth stones and ashes, or slowly 
upheaving continents; unless he fully understands how 
deliberate is Nature’s method, how prodigal she is of 
time, how irregular and capricious she is in all her opera- 
tions—he will never cease to wonder that allied forms 
should be distributed in apparent disorder and confusion, 
instead of being arranged on a regular ascending scale. 
And, moreover, unless he understands how Nature, like 
the Sibyl, destroys her own books, he will never cease to 
wonder at the absence of missing links. For it is not one 
missing link, but millions, that we require. It would 
however be just as reasonable to expect to find every 
book that ever was written; every clay-tablet that ever 
was baked in the printing ovens of Chaldea; every rock 
that was ever inscribed; every obelisk that was ever 
engraved; every temple wall that was ever painted with 
hieroglyphics, as to expect to find every fossil of impor- 


THE LOST BOOKS 365 


tance. Where are the missing links in literature, and 
where are the primeval forms? Where are the ancient 
Sanscrit hymns that were written without ink on palm 
leaves with an iron pen? Where are the thousands of 
Hebrew bibles that were written before the tenth cen- 
tury, A.D.? Where are the lost books of the Romans 
and the Greeks? We know that many manuscripts have 
been consumed in great fires; the fire of Alexandria 
in the time of Julius Cesar, which no doubt destroyed 
papyri that could never be replaced; the fire in the 
time of Oumar; the fires lighted by Popes and reverend 
Fathers of the Church; and the fire of Constantinople 
during the Crusades, which robbed us for ever of Arrian’s 
history of the successors of Alexander; Ctesias’ history of 
Persia, and his description of India; several books of 
Diodorus, Agatharcides, and Polybius; twenty orations 
of Demosthenes, and the Odes of Sappho. But the ma- 
terial of books, whether paper or parchment, bark, clay, 
or stone, is always of a perishable nature, and, under 
ordinary circumstances, is destroyed sooner or later by 
the action of the atmosphere. Were it not that books 
can be copied, what would remain to us of the litera- 
ture of the past? In a rainless country such as Egypt, 
which is a museum of Nature, a monumental land, not 
only painted and engraven records, but even paper scrolls 
of an immense antiquity have been preserved. But if 
we add to these the rock inscriptions, the printed bricks, 
and inscribed cylinders of Western Asia, how scanty 
and fortuitous are the remains! Let us now remember 
that fossils cannot be copied; once destroyed, they are for 
ever lost. Is it wonderful, therefore, that so few should 
be left? Fires greater than those of Alexandria and Con- 
stantinople are ever burning beneath our feet; at this 
very moment a precious library may be in flames. Yet 
that is not the worst. The action of air and water is 
fatal to the archives of nature, which it is not part of 


366 THE LOST FOSSILS 


nature’s plan to preserve for our instruction. Those ani- 
mals which have neither bones nor shells are at once 
destroyed; and those which possess a solid framework 
are only preserved under special and exceptional con- 
ditions. The marvel is not that we find so little, but 
that we find so much. The development of man from 
the lower animals is now an authenticated fact. We 
believe, therefore, that connecting links between man 
and some ape-like animal existed for the same reason 
that we believe the second decade of Livy existed. It 
is not impossible that the missing books of Livy may 
be discovered at some future day beneath the Italian 
soil. It is not impossible that forms intermediate be- 
tween man and his ape-like ancestors may be discovered 
in the unexplored strata of equatorial Africa, or the In- 
dian Archipelago. But either event is improbable in the 
extreme; and the existence of such intermediate forms 
will be admitted by the historians of the next generation, 
whether they are found or not. 

We shall now proceed to describe the rise and prog- 
ress of the mental principle. The origin of mind is an 
inscrutable mystery, but so is the origin of matter. 
If we go back to the beginning we find a world of gas, the 
atoms of which were kept asunder by excessive heat. 
Where did those atoms come from? How were they 
made? What were they made for? In reply to these 
questions theology is garrulous, but science is dumb. 

Mind is a property of matter. Matter is inhabited 
by mind. There can be no mind without matter; there 
can be no matter without mind. When the matter is 
simple in its composition, its mental tendencies are also 
simple; the atoms merely tend to approach one another 
and to cohere; and as matter under the influence of 
varied forces (evolved by the cooling of the world) be- 
comes more varied in its composition, its mental ten- 
dencies become more and more numerous, more and 


MIND AND MATTER 367 


more complex, more and more elevated, till at last they 
are developed into the desires and propensities of the 
animal, into the aspirations and emotions of the man. 
But the various tendencies which inhabit the human 
mind, and which devote it to ambition, to religion, or to 
love, are not in reality more wonderful than the tendency 
which impels two ships to approach each other in a calm. 
For what can be more wonderful than that which can 
never be explained? The difference between the mind of 
the ship and the mind of man is the difference between. 
the acorn and the oak. 

The simplest atoms are attracted to one another 
merely according to distance and weight. That is the 
law of gravitation. But the compound atoms, which 
are called elements, display a power of selection. A 
will unite itself to C in preference to B; and if D 
passes by, will divorce itself from C, and unite itself to 
D. Such compounds of a compound are still more com- 
plex in their forms, and more varied in their minds. 
Water which is composed of two gases—oxygen and 
hydrogen—when hot, becomes a vapour; when cold. 
becomes a crystal. In the latter case it displays a struc- 
tural capacity. Crystals assume particular forms ac- 
cording to the substances of which they are composed; 
they may be classed into species, and if their forms are 
injured by accident, they have the power of repairing 
their structure by imbibing matter from without. A. 
live form is the result of matter subjected to certain com- 
plex forces, the chief of which is the chemical power of 
the sun. It is continually being injured by the wear 
and tear of its own activity, it is continually darning 
and stitching its own life. After a certain period of 
time it loses its self-mending power, and consequently 
dies. The crystal grows from without by simple accre- 
tions or putting on of coats. The plant or animal grows 
and re-grows from within by means of a chemical opera- 


368 ORGANIC AND INORGANIC 


tion. Moreover, the crystal is merely an individual; the 
plant or animal is the member of a vast community; be- 
fore it dies, and usually as it dies, it produces a repeti- 
tion of itself. The mental forces which inhabit the 
primeval jelly dot are more complex than those which in- 
habit the crystal; but those of the crystal are more 
complex than those of a gas, and those of a gas than 
those of the true elementary atoms which know only two 
forces—Attraction and Repulsion—the primeval Pull 
and Push, which le at the basis of all Nature’s opera- 
tions. 

The absorption of food and the repetition of form 
in the animal are not at first to be distinguished from 
that chemical process which is termed growth. Then 
from this principle of growth, the root of the human 
flower, two separated instincts like twin seed-leaves arise. 
The first is the propensity to preserve self-life by seek- 
ing food; from this instinct of Self-preservation, our 
intellectual faculties have been derived. The second is 
the propensity to preserve the life of the species; and 
from this instinct of Reproduction, our moral faculties 
have been derived. 

The animal at first absorbs its food and unites with 
its mate as blindly and as helplessly as the crystal 
shapes itself into its proper form, as oxygen combines 
with hydrogen, as ships roll towards each other in a 
calm. How then can a line be drawn between the in- 
organic and the organic, the lifeless and the alive? The 
cell that vibrates in the water, and the crystal that 
forms in the frost, are each the result of certain forces 
over which they have no control. But as the body of 
the animal is developed in complexity by the action of 
complex forces, certain grey lumps of matter make their 
appearance within its structure, and out of these rises a 
spirit which introduces the animal to himself, which 
makes him conscious of his own existence. He becomes 


DAWN OF REASON 369 


aware that he is alive; that he has an appetite; and that 
other animals have an appetite for him. His mind 
though feeble and contracted is improved by experience. 
He devises stratagems to avoid his enemies, or to seize 
his prey. At certain seasons he becomes conscious of his 
desire for a mate; and that which, with his ancestors, 
was a blind tendency, an inherited part of growth, be- 
comes with him a passion brightened by intelligence. 

It is usually supposed that the transition of an ape- 
like animal into man is the most remarkable event in 
the history of animated forms. But this idea arises 
from human vanity and ignorance. The most remark- 
able event, after the origin of life, is certainly that to 
which we now allude; the first glimmering of conscious- 
ness and reason. Yet even here we can draw no dividing 
line. The animal becomes conscious that he desires food, 
and at certain periods, a mate; but the desires themselves 
are not new; they existed and they ruled him long before. 
When developed to a certain point, he begins to “take 
notice,” as the nurses say; but his nature remains the 
same. However, this intelligence becomes in time itself 
a force, and gradually obtains to some extent the faculty 
of directing the forces by which the animal was once 
despotically ruled. By an effort of the human brain, for 
example, the reproductive force, or tendency, or instinct, 
can be obliterated and suppressed. 

What we have to say, then, respecting the origin of 
our early ancestors is this: that when matter was sub- 
jected to a complicated play of forces, chief among which 
was solar influence, plants and animals came into life; 
and that when animals were subjected to an ever-increas- 
ing variety of forces, they became varied in their struc- 
ture; and that when their structure had attained a 
certain measure of variety they became conscious of their 
own existence; and that then nature endowed them with 
the faculty of preserving their lives, and that of their 


370 THE DARWINIAN LAW 


species by means of their own conscious efforts. Next, 
it will be shown that the successful competitors in the 
struggle for existence, not only obtained the food and 
females for which they strove, but also by means of the 
efforts which they made in order to obtain them, raised 
themselves unconsciously in the animated scale. And 
lastly, we shall find that men who, in the savage state, 
are little better than the brutes, their lives being 
absorbed in the business of self-preservation and repro- 
duction, are now in the civilised condition becoming con- 
scious of the scheme of nature, and are beginning to 
assist her by the methodical improvement of their mental 
powers. 

The lower animals have a hard matter to earn their 
daily bread, and to preserve their children from star- 
vation; and with them the course of true love does not 
by any means run smooth. Since only a few can succeed 
in the scramble for food, and not all can obtain mates, 
for polygamy frequently prevails, it follows as a matter 
of necessity, that those animals which are the strongest, 
the swiftest, and the most intelligent, will survive and 
leave offspring, and by the continued survival of the 
fittest, the animated world improves from generation 
4o generation, and rises in the scale. So far as strength 
and swiftness are concerned, limits are placed upon im- 
provement. But there are no limits to the improvement 
of intelligence. We find in the lower kingdom muscular 
power in its perfection; but the brain is always imper- 
fect, always young, always growing, always capable 
of being developed. In writing the history of animal 
progress we must therefore concentrate our attention 
upon the brain, and we shall find that the development 
of that organ is in great measure due to the influence 
of the affections. 

Whether Nature has placed pain at the portals of 
Jove throughout the animal kingdom as she has at the 


ORIGIN OF LOVE alk 


portals of maternity, or whatever may be the cause, 
it is certain that the female flees from the male at 
the courting season, and that he captures her by means 
of his strength, swiftness, dexterity, or cunning, in the 
same manner as he obtains his prey. He is also obliged 
to fight duels in order to possess or to retain her, and 
thus his courage is developed. But at a later period in 
animal life a more peaceable kind of courtship comes into 
vogue. The females become queens. They select their 
husbands from a crowd of admirers, who strive to please 
them with their colours, their perfumes, or their music. 
The cavaliers adorned in their bright wedding suits, 
which they wear only at the love-making season, display 
themselves before the dames. Others serenade them with 
vocal song, or by means of an apparatus fitted to the 
ximbs, which corresponds to instrumental music. Rival 
troubadours will sing before their lady, as she sits in her 
leafy bower, till one of them is compelled to yield from 
sheer exhaustion, and a feathered hero has been known to 
sing till he dropped down dead. At this period sexual 
timidity becomes a delicious coyness which arouses the 
ardour of the male. Thus Love is born: it is brought 
forth by the association of ideas. The desire of an 
animal to satisfy a want grows into an affection beyond 
and independent of the want. In the same manner the 
love of the young for its parents grows out of its liking 
for the food which the parents supply; and the love of 
parents for the young, though more obscure, may perhaps 
also be explained by association. The mother no doubt 
believes the offspring to be part of herself, as it was in 
fact but a short time before, and thus feels for it a kind 
of self-love. The affection of the offspring for the 
parents, and of parents for the offspring, and of spouses 
for each other, at first endures only for a season. But 
when. the intelligence of the animals has risen to a cer- 
tain point, their powers of memory are improved, they 


372 ANIMAL SOCIETIES 


recognise their parents, their spouses, their young, long 
after the business of the nest is over and consort together 
to renew their caresses and endearments. In this man- 
ner the flock is formed; it is based upon domestic love. 
And soon experience teaches them the advantages of 
union. They are the better able when in flocks to ob- 
tain food, and to defend themselves against their foes. 
They accordingly dwell together, and by means of their 
social habits their intelligence is quickened, their af- 
fections are enlarged. The members of animal societies 
possess in a marvellous degree the power of co-operation, 
the sentiment of fidelity to the herd. By briefly describ- 
ing what the lower animals do, and what they feel, we 
shall show that they possess in a dispersed and elemen- 
tary condition all the materials of which human nature is 
composed. 

In their communities there is sometimes a regular 
form of government and a division into castes. They 
have their monarch, their labourers, and soldiers, who 
are sterile females like the Amazons of Dahomey. They 
have slaves which they capture by means of military 
expeditions, attacking the villages of their victims and 
carrying off the prisoners in their mouths. They after- 
wards make the slaves carry them. They have domestic 
animals which they milk. They form alliances with 
animals of a foreign species or nationality and admit 
them into the community when it can be profited thereby. 
They build houses or towns which are ingeniously con- 
structed, and which in proportion to the size of the 
architects, are greater than the Pyramids. They have 
club-houses or salons which they decorate with flowers 
and bright shells. They march in regular order; when 
they feed they post sentries which utter alert cries from 
time to time, just as our sentries cry all’s well. They 
combine to execute punishment, expelling or killing an 
ill-conducted member of the tribe. As among savages, 


ANIMAL VIRTUES 373 


the sick and the weakly are usually killed: though some- 
times they are kept alive by alms; even the blind being 
fed by charitable persons. They labour incessantly for 
the welfare of the community; they bear one another’s 
burdens; they fight with indomitable courage for the 
fatherland, and endeavour to rescue a comrade even 
against overwhelming odds. The domestic virtues are 
strong amongst them. Their conjugal love is often in- 
tense and pure; spouses have been known to pine to death 
when parted from each other. But if they have human 
virtues, they have also human vices; conjugal infidelity 
is known amongst them; and some animals appear to be 
profligate by nature. They are exceedingly jealous. 
They sport, they gamble, and frisk, and caress, and kiss 
each other, putting mouth to mouth. They shed tears. 
They utter musical sounds in tune. They are cleanly 
in their persons. They are ostentatious and vain, proud 
of their personal appearance, bestowing much time upon 
their toilet. They meditate and execute revenge, keep- 
ing in memory those who have offended them. ‘They 
dream. They are capable of reflection and selection; 
they deliberate between two opposite desires. They 
are inquisitive and often fall victims to their passion for 
investigating every object which they have not seen be- 
fore. They profit by experience; they die wiser than 
they were born, and though their stock of knowledge 
in great measure dies with them, their young ones acquire 
some of it by means of inheritance and imitation. 

These remarkable mental powers were acquired by 
the lower animals partly through the struggle to obtain 
food, which sharpened their intelligence; and partly 
through the struggle to obtain the favours of the females, 
which developed their affections. In all cases, progress 
resulted from necessity. Races change only that they 
may not die; they are developed, so to speak, in self-de- 
fence. They have no inherent tendency to rise in the 


374 OUR APE-LIKE ANCESTORS 


organic scale as plants grow to their flower, as animals 
grow to their prime. They have, however, a capacity 
for progress, and that is called forth by circumstances 
acting upon them from without. The law of growth in 
the lower kingdom is this, that all progress is preceded 
by calamity, that all improvement is based upon defect. 
This law affords us the clue to a phenomenon which at 
first is difficult to understand. That animal which has 
triumphed over all the rest, was exceedingly defective in 
its physique. The race has not been to the swift, nor the 
battle to the strong. But the very defects of that ani- 
mal’s body made it exclusively rely upon its mind; and 
when the struggle for life became severe, the mind was 
improved by natural selection, and the animal was slowly 
developed into Man. 

Our ape-like ancestors were not unlike the existing 
gorilla, chimpanzee, and ourang-outang. They lived 
in large herds and were prolific; polygamy was in vogue, 
and at the courting season love-duels were fought among 
the males. They chiefly inhabited the ground, but 
ascended the trees in search of fruit, and also built plat- 
forms of sticks and leaves, on which the females were 
confined, and which were occasionally used as sleep- 
ing-places, just as birds sometimes roost in old nests. 
These animals went on all fours, rising to the upright 
posture now and then, in order to see some object at 2 
distance, but supporting that posture with difficulty, 
holding on to a branch with one hand. They were slow 
in their movements; their body was almost naked, so 
scantily was it clothed with hair; the males had but 
poorly developed tusks, or canine teeth; the ears were 
flattened from disuse, and had no longer the power of 
being raised; the tail as in all great apes has disappeared 
beneath the skin. This defenceless structure resulted 
from the favourable conditions under which, during 
many ages, these animals had lived. They inhabited 


LANGUAGE 375 


a warm tropical land; they had few enemies, and abun- 
dant food; their physical powers had been enfeebled by 
disuse. But nothing is ever lost in nature. What had 
become of the force which had once been expended on 
agility and strength? It had passed into the brain. 

The chimpanzee is not so large a creature or so strong 
as the gorilla; but, as I was informed by the natives 
in that country where the two species exist together, the 
chimpanzee is the more intelligent of the two. In the 
same manner our ape-like ancestors were inferior to 
the chimpanzee in strength and activity, and its superior 
in mental powers. 

All gregarious animals have a language, by means 
of which they communicate with one another. Some- 
times their language is that of touch: cut off the an- 
tenne of the ant, and it is dumb. With most animals the 
language is that of vocal sound, and its varied intona- 
tions of anger, joy, or grief, may be distinguished even 
by the human ear. Animals have also their alarm-cries, 
their love-calls, and sweet murmuring plaintive sounds, 
which are uttered only by mothers as they fondle and 
nurse their young. The language of our progenitors 
consisted of vocal sounds, and also movements of the 
hands. The activity of mind and social affection de- 
veloped in these animals through the Law of Compensa- 
tion made them fond of babbling and gesturing to one 
another, and thus their language was already of a com- 
plicated nature, when events occurred which developed 
it still more. Owing to causes remotely dependent on 
geological revolutions, dark days fell upon these crea- 
tures. Food became scanty; enemies surrounded them. 
The continual presence of danger, the habit of incessant 
combat, drew them more closely together. Their defects 
of activity and strength made them rely on one another 
for protection. Nothing now but their unexampled power 
of combination could save their lives. This power of 


376 IMITATIVE LANGUAGE 


combination was entirely dependent upon their lan- 
guage, which was developed and improved until at length 
it passed into a new stage. The first stage of language 
is that of Intonation, in which the ideas are arranged on 
a chromatic scale. We still use this language in con- 
versing with our dogs, who perfectly understand the 
difference between the curses, not loud but deep, which 
are vented on their heads, and the caressing sounds, 
which are usually uttered in falsetto; while we under- 
stand the growl, the whine, and the excited yelp of joy. 
The new stage of language was that of Imitation. Im- 
pelled partly by necessity, partly by social love, com- 
bined with mental activity, these animals began to notify 
events to one another by imitative sounds, gestures, and 
grimaces. For instance, when they wished to indicate 
the neighbourhood of a wild beast, they gave a low 
growl; they pointed in a certain direction; they shaped 
their features to resemble his; they crawled stealthily 
along with their belly crouched to the ground. To imi- 
tate water, they bubbled with their mouths; they grubbed 
with their hands and pretended to eat, to show that 
they had discovered roots. The pleasure and profit ob- 
tained from thus communicating their ideas to one 
another led them to invent conversation. Language 
passed into its third stage—the Conventional or Arti- 
ficial. Certain objects were pointed out, and certain 
sounds were uttered, and it was agreed that those sounds 
should always signify the objects named. At first this 
conventional language consisted only of substantives; 
each word signified an object, and was a sentence in it- 
self. Afterwards adjectives and verbs were introduced; 
and lastly, words which had at first been used for physi- 
cal objects were applied to the nomenclature of ideas. 

Combination is a method of resistance; language is 
the instrument of combination. Language, therefore, 
may be considered the first weapon of our species, and 


CLIMATE AND BRAIN 377 


was improved, as all weapons would be, by that long, 
never-ceasing war, the Battle of Existence. Our second 
weapon was the Hand. With monkeys the hand is used 
as a foot, and the foot is used as a hand. But when the 
hand began to be used for throwing missiles, it was spe- 
cialised more and more, and feet were required to do all 
the work of locomotion. This separation of the foot and 
hand is the last instance of the physiological division of 
labour; and when it was effected, the human frame be- 
came complete. The erect posture was assumed: that it 
is modern and unnatural is shown by the difficulty with 
which it is maintained for any length of time. The 
centre of gravity being thus shifted, certain altera- 
tions were produced in the physical appearance of the 
species; since that time however, ‘the human body has 
been but slightly changed, the distinctions which exist 
between the races of men being unimportant and ex- 
ternal. Such as they are, they have been produced 
by differences of climate and food acting indirectly 
upon the races throughout geological periods; and it 
is also possible that these distinctions of hair and skin 
were chiefly acquired at a time when man’s intelli- 
gence being imperfectly developed, his physical organ- 
isation was more easily moulded by external conditions 
than was afterwards the case. For while with the lower 
animals the conditions by which they are surrounded 
ean produce alterations throughout their whole struc- 
ture, or in any part; with men, they can produce an 
alteration only in the brain. For instance, a quad- 
ruped inhabits a region which, owing to geological 
changes, is gradually assuming an Arctic character. In 
the course of some hundreds or thousands of centuries the 
species puts on a coat of warm fur, which is either white 
in colour, or which turns white at the snowy period of the 
year. But when man is exposed to similar conditions 
he builds a warm house and kills certain animals, that 


378 DISCOVERY OF FIRE 


he may wear their skins. By these means he evades 
the changed conditions so far as his general structure 
is concerned. But his brain has been indirectly altered 
by the climate. Courage, industry, and ingenuity, have 
been called forth by the struggle for existence; the brain 
is thereby enlarged, and the face assumes a more in- 
telligent expression. Of such episodes the ancient his- 
tory of man was composed. He was ever contending 
with the forces of nature, with the wild beasts of the 
forest, and with the members of his own species outside 
his clan. In that long and varied struggle his intelligence 
was developed. His first invention, as might be sup- 
posed, was an improvement in the art of murder. The 
lower animals sharpen their claws and whet their tusks. 
It was merely an extension of this instinct which taught 
the primeval men to give point and edge to their sticks 
and stones; and out of this first invention the first 
great discovery was made. While men were patiently 
rubbing sticks to point them into arrows, a spark leapt 
forth and ignited the wood-dust which had been scraped 
from the sticks. Thus Fire was found. By a series of 
accidents its uses were revealed. Its possessors cooked 
their food, and so were improved in health and vigour 
both of body and mind. They altered the face of nature 
by burning down forests. By burning the withered grass 
they favoured the growth of the young crop, and thus 
attracted, in the prairie lands, thousands of wild ani- 
mals to their fresh green pastures. With the assistance 
of fire they felled trees and hollowed logs into canoes. 
They hardened the points of stakes in the embers; and 
with their new weapons were able to attack the Mam- 
moth, thrusting their spears through his colossal throat. 
They made pots. They employed their new servant in 
agriculture and in metallurgy. They used it also as 
weapon; they shot flaming arrows, or hurled fiery jave- 
lins against the foe. Above all, they prepared, by means 


DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS 379 


of fire, the vegetable poison which they discovered in 
the woods; and this invention must have created a revo- 
lution in the art of ancient war. There is a custom in 
East Africa for the king to send fire to his vassals, who 
extinguish all the fires on their hearths, and re-light them 
from the brand which the envoy brings. It is possible 
that this may be a relic of tribe subjection to the original 
Fire tribe: it is certain that the discovery of fire 
would give the tribes which possessed it an immense 
advantage over all the others. War was continually 
being waged among the primeval men; and tribes were 
continually driven, by battle or hunger, to seek new 
lands. As hunters they required vast areas on which to 
live, and so were speedily dispersed over the whole sur- 
face of the globe, and adopted various habits and voca- 
tions according to the localities in which they dwelt. 
But they took with them, from their common home, the 
elements of those pursuits. The first period of human 
history may be entitled Forest-life. The forest was the 
womb of our species, as the ocean was that of all our 
kind. In the dusky twilight of the primeval woods the 
Nations were obscurely born. While men were yet in 
the hunting stage, while they were yet mere animals of 
prey, they made those discoveries by means of which 
they were afterwards formed into three great families— 
the pastoral, the maritime, and the agricultural. 

When a female animal is killed, the young one, fear- 
ing to be alone, often follows the hunter home; it is 
tamed for sport; and when it is discovered that ani- 
mals can be made useful, domestication is methodically 
pursued. While men were yet in the forest they tamed 
only the dog to assist them in hunting, and perhaps the 
fowl as an article of food. But when certain tribes, 
driven by enemies or by starvation from their old 
haunts, entered the prairie land, clad in skins or bark- 
cloth, taking with them their fire-sticks, and perhaps 


380 INVENTION OF AGRICULTURE 


some blacksmith’s tools, they adopted breeding as their 
chief pursuit, and subdued to their service the buffalo, 
the sheep, the goat, the camel, the horse, and the ass. 
At first these animals were merely used as meat; next, 
their milk-giving powers were developed, and so a daily 
food was obtained without killing the animal itself; then 
they were broken in to carry burdens, to assist their 
masters in the chase and in war; and clothes and houses 
were manufactured from their skins. 

The forest tribes who settled on the banks of rivers 
learnt to swim and to make nets, fish-traps, rafts, and 
canoes. When they migrated they followed the river, 
and so were carried to the sea. Then the ocean became 
their fish-pond. They learnt to build large canoes, with 
mast and matting sails; they followed the fish far away; 
lost the land at night, or in a storm; discovered new 
shores, returned home, and again set out as colonists, 
with their wives and families, to the lands which they 
had found. By such means the various tribes were 
dispersed beyond the seas. 

Thirdly, when the tribes were in the forest condition 
they lived partly upon roots and berries, partly upon 
game. The men hunted, and the women collected the 
vegetable food, upon which they subsisted exclusively 
during the absence of their husbands. When the habi- 
tations of a clan were fixed, it often happened that the 
supply of edible plants in the neighbourhood would be 
exhausted, and starvation suggested the idea of sowing 
and transplanting. Agriculture was probably a female 
invention; it was certainly at first a female occupa- 
tion. The bush was burnt down to clear a place for 
the crop, and the women being too idle to remove the 
ashes from the soil, cast the seed upon them. The ashes 
acting as manure, garden varieties of the eating plants 
appeared. Among the pastoral people, the seed-bearing 
grasses were also cultivated into large-grained corn. 
But as long as the tribes could migrate from one region 


DUMB BARTER 381 


to another, agriculture was merely a secondary occupa- 
tion, and was left, for the most part, in female hands. 
It was when a tribe was imprisoned in a vailey with 
mountains or deserts all around, that agriculture became 
their main pursuit, as breeding was that of the shepherd 
wanderers, and fishing that of the people on the shore. 

The pastoral tribes had a surplus supply of meat, 
milk, wool, and the rude products of the ancient loom. 
The marine tribes had salt and smoked fish. The agri- 
cultural tribes had garden-roots and grain. Here, then, 
a division of labour had arisen among the tribes; and 
if only they could be blended together, a complete 
nation would be formed. But the butcher tribes, the 
fishmonger tribes, and the baker tribes, lived apart from 
one another; they were timid, ferocious, and distrustful; 
their languages were entirely distinct. They did not 
dare to communicate with one another, except to carry 
on dumb barter, as it is called. A certain tribe, for 
example, who desired salt, approached the frontier of 
the sea-coast people, lighted a fire as a signal, and laid 
down some meat or fidur. They then retired; the 
coast tribe came up, laid down salt, and also retired. 
The meat or flour tribe again went to the spot; and if 
the salt was sufficient, they took it away; if not, they 
left it untouched, to indicate that they required more; 
and so they chaffered a considerable time, each bid 
consisting of a promenade. 

Tt is evident that such a system of trade might go 
on for ages without the respective tribes becoming better 
acquainted with each other. It is only by means of 
war and of religion that the tribes can be compressed 
into the nation. The shepherd tribes had a natural 
aptitude for war. They lived almost entirely on horse- 
back; they attacked wild beasts in hand to hand con- 
flict on the open plain, and they often fought with one 
another for a pasture or a well. They were attracted 
by the crops of the agricultural people, whom they 


382 THE SHEPHERDS 


conquered with facility. Usually they preferred their 
roaming life, and merely exacted a tribute of corn. But 
sometimes a people worsted in war, exiled from their 
pastures, wandering homeless through the sandy deserts, 
discovered a fruitful river plain, in which they settled 
down, giving up their nomad habits, but keeping their 
flocks and herds. They reduced the aborigines to sla- 
very; made some of them labourers in the fields; others 
were appointed to tend the flocks; others were sent to 
the river or the coast to fish; others were taught the arts 
of the distaff and the loom; others were made to work 
as carpenters and smiths. The wives of the shepherd 
conquerors were no longer obliged to milk the cows and 
camels, and to weave clothes and tents ; they became 
ladies, and were attended by domestic slaves. Their 
husbands became either military nobles or learned 
priests; the commander-in-chief or patriarch became 
the king. Foreign wars led to foreign commerce, and 
the priests developed the resources of the country. The 
simple fabrics of the old tent life were refined in texture 
and beautified with dyes; the potter’s clay was con- 
verted into fine porcelain and glass, the blacksmith’s 
shop became a manufactory of ornamented arms; in- 
genious machines were devised for the irrigation of the 
soil; the arts and sciences were adopted by the gov- 
ernment, and employed in the service of the state. 

Here then we have a nation manufactured by means 
of war. Religion is afterwards useful as a means of 
keeping the conquered people in subjection; but in this 
case it plays only a secondary part. In another class of 
nationalities, however, religion operates as the prime 
agent. 

When the human herd first wandered through the 
gloomy and gigantic forest, sleeping on reed platforms 
in the trees, or burrowing in holes, there was no goy- 
ernment but that of force. The strongest man was 
the leader, and ceased to be the leader when he ceased 


THE GHOST RELIGION 383 


to be the strongest. But as the minds of men became 
developed, the ruler was elected by the members of the 
clan, who combined to depose him if he exceeded his 
rightful powers; and chiefs were chosen not only for 
their strength, but also sometimes for their beauty, and 
sometimes on account of their intelligence. These chiefs 
possessed but little power; they merely expressed and 
executed the voice of the majority. But when it was 
believed that the soul was immortal, or, in other words, 
that there were ghosts; when it was believed that the 
bodies of men were merely garments, and that the true 
inmates were spirits, whom death stripped bare of flesh 
and blood, but whom death was powerless to kill; when 
it was believed that these souls or ghosts dwelt. among 
the graves, haunted their old homes, hovered round the 
_ scenes in which they had passed their lives, and even 
took a part in human affairs, a theory arose that the 
ghost of the departed chief was still the ruler of the 
clan, and that in his spiritual state he could inflict 
terrible punishments on those by whom he was offended, 
and could also bestow upon them good fortune, in hunt- 
ing, in harvests, and in war. So then homage and gifts 
were rendered to him at his grave. A child of his house 
became the master of the clan, and professed to receive 
the commands of the deceased. For the first time the 
chiefs were able to exercise power without employing 
force; but this power had also its limits. In the first 
place the chief feared he would be punished by the ghost 
if he injured the people over whom he ruled, and there 
were always prophets or seers who could see visions 
and dream dreams when the mind of the people was ex- 
cited against the chief. By means therefore of religion, 
which at first consisted only in the fear of ghosts, the 
government of the clan was improved; savage liberty or 
license was restrained; the young trembled before the 
old, whom previously they had eaten as soon as they 
were useless. Religion was also of service in uniting 


384 THE HOLY GRAVES 


separated clans. In the forest, food was scanty; as soon 
as a clan expanded it was forced to divide, and the 
separated part pursued an orbit of its own. Savage 
dialects change almost day by day; the old people can 
always speak a language which their grandchildren do 
not understand, and so, in the course of a single genera- 
tion, the two clans become foreigners and foes to one 
another. But when ghost-worship had been established, 
the members of the divided clans resorted to the holy 
graves at certain seasons of the year to unite with the 
members of the parent clan in sacrificing to the ances- 
tral shades; the season of the pilgrimage was made a 
Truce of God; a fair was held, at which trade and com- 
petitive amusements were carried on. Yet still the clans 
or tribes had little connection with one another, except- 
ing at that single period of the year. It was for war 
to continue the work which religion had begun. Some- 
times the tribes uniting invaded a foreign country, and 
founded an empire of the kind which has already been 
described; then the army became a nation, and the camp 
a town. In other cases the tribes, being weaker than 
their neighbours, were compelled for their mutual pro- 
tection to draw together into towns, and to fortify them- 
selves with walls. | 

In its original condition the town was a federation. 
Each family was a little kingdom in itself, inhabiting 
a fortified cluster of dwellings, having its own domestic 
religion, governed by its own laws. The paterfamilias 
was king and priest; he could put to death any member 
of his family. There was little distinction between the 
wives, the sons, the daughters, on the one hand, and the 
slaves, the oxen, and the sheep on the other. These 
Family Fathers assembled in council, and passed laws 
for their mutual convenience and protection. Yet these 
laws were not national; they resembled treaties between 
foreign states; and two Houses would frequently go to 
war and fight pitched battles in the streets without any 


THE PRIMEVAL TOWN 385 


interference from the commonwealth at large. If the 
town progressed in power and intelligence, the advan- 
tages of centralization were perceived by all; the 
Fathers were induced to emancipate their children, and 
to delegate their royal power to a senate or a king; each 
man was responsible for his own actions, and for them 
alone; individualism was established. This important 
revolution which, as we have elsewhere shown, tends to 
produce the religious theory of rewards and punish- 
ments in a future state, was itself in part produced by 
the influence and teaching of the priests. 

Besides the worship of the ancestral shades the ancient 
people adored the great deities of nature who governed 
the woods and the waters, the earth and the sky. When 
men died, it was supposed that they had been killed by 
the gods; it was therefore believed that those who lived 
to a good old age were special favourites of the divine 
beings. Many people asked them by what means they 
had obtained the good graces of the gods. With savages 
nothing is done gratis; the old men were paid for their 
advice; and in course of time the oracle system was 
established. The old men consulted the gods; they at 
first advised, they next commanded what gifts should 
be offered on the altar. They collected taxes, they issued 
orders on the divine behalf. In the city of Federated 
Families the priests formed a sect entirely apart: they 
belonged not to this house, or to that house, but to all: 
it was to their interest that the families should be at 
peace; that a national religion should be established; 
that the household gods or ancestral ghosts should be 
degraded, that the despotism of the hearth should be 
destroyed. They acted as peacemakers and arbitrators 
of disputes. They united the tribes in the national sac- 
rifice, and the solemn dance. They preached the power 
and grandeur of the gods. They became the tutors of 
the people; they rendered splendid service to mankind. 
We are accustomed to look only at the dark side of those 


386 INVENTION OF THE OATH 


ancient faiths; their frivolous and sanguinary laws; 
their abominable offerings, their grotesque rites. Yet 
even the pure and lofty religions of Confucius and 
Zoroaster; of Moses, and Jesus, and Mahomet; of the 
Brahmins and the Buddhists, have not done so much for 
man as those barbarous religions of the early days. 
They established a tyranny, and tyranny was useful in 
the childhood of mankind. The chiefs could only enact 
those laws which were indispensable for the life of the 
community. But the priests were supposed to utter 
the commands of Invisible Beings whose strange tem- 
pers could clearly be read in the violent outbreaks and 
changing aspects of the sky. The more irrational the 
laws of the priests appeared, the more evident it was 
that they were not of man. ‘Terror generated piety: 
‘wild savages were tamed into obedience; they became 
the slaves of the unseen; they humbled themselves 
before the priests, and implicitly followed their com- 
mands that they might escape sickness, calamity, and 
sudden death; their minds were subjected to a useful 
discipline; they acquired the habit of self-denial, which 
like all habits can become a pleasure to the mind, and 
can be transmitted as a tendency or instinct from gen- 
eration to generation. ‘They were ordered to abstain 
from certain kinds of food; to abstain from fishing and 
working in the fields on days sacred to the gods of the 
waters and the earth: they were taught to give with 
generosity not only in fear, but also in thanksgiving. 
Even the human sacrifices which they made were some- 
times acts of filial. piety and of tender love. They gave 
up the slaves whom they valued most to attend their 
fathers in the Under-world; or sent their souls as pres- 
ents to the Gods. But the chief benefit which religion 
ever conferred upon mankind, whether in ancient or in 
modern times, was undoubtedly the oath. The priests 
taught that if a promise was made in the name of the 
gods, and that promise was broken, the gods would kill 


DISCOVERY OF GOD 387 


those who took their name in vain. Such is the true 
meaning of the third commandment. Before that time 
treaties of peace and contracts of every kind in which 
mutual confidence was required could only be effected 
by the interchange of hostages. But now by means of 
this purely theological device a —MFetaoishrdluetshe 
self a sacred pledge: men could at all times confide in 
one another; and foreign tribes met freely together be- 
neath the shelter of this useful superstition which yet 
survives in our courts of law. In those days, however, 
the oath required no law of perjury to sustain its terrors: 
as Xenophon wrote, “He who breaks an oath defies the 
gods;” and it was believed that the gods never failed 
sooner or later to take their revenge. 

The priests in order to increase their power, studied 
the properties of plants, the movements of the stars; 
they cultivated music and the imitative arts; reserving 
their knowledge to their own caste, they soon surpassed 
in mental capacity the people whom they ruled. And 
being more intelligent, they became also more moral, for 
the conscience is an organ of the mind; it is strength- 
ened and refined by the education of the intellect. 
They learnt from nature that there is unity in all her 
parts; hence they believed that one God or man-like 
being had made the heavens and the earth. At first this 
God was a despotic tithe-taker like themselves; but as 
their own minds become more noble, and more pure; as 
they began to feel towards the people a sentiment of 
paternity and love, so God, the reflected image of their 
minds, rose into a majestic and benignant being, and 
this idea reacted on their minds, as the imagination of 
the artist is inspired by the masterpiece which he him- 
self has wrought. And, as the Venus of Milo and the 
Apollo Belvedere have been endowed by man with a 
beauty more exquisite than can be found on earth; a 
beauty that may well be termed divine; so the God 
who is worshipped by elevated minds, is a mental form 


388 INVENTION OF HEAVEN 


endowed with power, love, and virtue in perfection. 
The Venus and the Apollo are ideals of the body; God 
is an ideal of the mind. Both are made by men; both 
are superhuman in their beauty; both are human in 
their form. To worship the image made of stone is to 
worship the work of the human hand. To worship the 
image made of ideas is to worship the work of the 
human brain. God-worship, therefore, is idolatry; but 
in the early ages of mankind how fruitful of good 
was that error, how ennobling was that chimera of the 
brain! For when the priests had sufficiently progressed 
in the wisdom of morality to discover that men should 
act to others, as they would have others act to them; 
and that they should never do in thought what they 
would not do in deed; then these priests, the shepherds 
of the people, desired to punish those who did evil, and 
to reward those who did good to their fellow-men; and 
thus, always transferring their ideas to the imaginary 
being whom they had created, and whom they adored, 
they believed and they taught that God punished the 
guilty, that God rewarded the good; and when they 
perceived that men are not requited in this world ac- 
cording to their deeds, they believed and they taught 
that this brief life is merely a preparation for another 
world; and that the souls or ghosts will be condemned 
to eternal misery, or exalted to everlasting bliss, accord- 
ing to the lives which they have led within the garment 
of the flesh. This belief, though not less erroneous than 
‘that on which the terrors of the oath were based; this 
belief, though not less a delusion than the faith in 
ghosts, of which, in fact, it is merely an extension; this 
belief, though it will some day become pernicious to 
intellectual and moral life, and has already plundered 
mankind of thousands and thousands of valuable minds, 
exiling earnest and ardent beings from the main-stream 
of humanity, entombing them in hermitage or cell, 
teaching them to despise the gifts of the intellect which 


INVENTION OF HELL 389 


nature has bestowed, teaching them to waste the pre- 
cious years in barren contemplation, and in selfish 
prayers; this belief has yet undoubtedly assisted the 
progress of the human race. In ancient life, it exalted 
the imagination, it purified the heart, it encouraged to 
virtue, it deterred from crime. At the present day a 
tender sympathy for the unfortunate, a jealous care for 
the principles of freedom, a severe public opinion, and 
a Law difficult to escape, are the safeguards of society; 
but there have been periods in the history of man when 
the fear of hell was the only restriction on the pleasure 
of the rulers; when the hope of heaven was the only 
consolation in the misery of the ruled. 

The doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future 
state is comparatively modern; the authors of the Iliad, 
the authors of the Pentateuch had no conception of a 
heaven or a hell; they knew only Hades or Scheol, where 
men dwelt as shadows, without pain, without joy; where 
the wicked ceased from troubling and the weary were at 
rest. The sublime conception of a single God was 
slowly and painfully attained by a few civilized people 
in ancient times. The idea that God is a Being of 
virtue, and of love has not been attained even in the 
present day except by a cultivated few. Such is the 
frailty of the human heart, that men, even when they 
strive to imagine a perfect Being, stain him with their 
passions, and raise up an idol which is defective as a 
moral form. The God of this country is called a God 
of love; but it is said that he punishes the crimes and 
even the errors of a short and troubled life with torture 
which will have no end. It is not even a Man which 
theologians create; for no man is quite without pity; 
no man, however cruel he might be, could bear to gaze 
for ever on the horrors of the fire and the rack; no 
man could listen for ever to voices shrieking with pain, 
and ever crying out for mercy and forgiveness. And 
if such is the character of the Christian God, if such 


390 THE CHRISTIAN GOD 


is the idea which is worshipped by compassionate and 
cultivated men, what are we to expect in a barbarous 
age? The God of Job was a sultan of the skies, who, 
for a kind of wager, allowed a faithful servant to be 
tortured, like that man who performed vivisection on a 
favourite dog which licked his hand throughout the 
operation. The Jehovah of the Pentateuch was a mur- 
derer and bandit; he rejoiced in the offerings of human 
flesh. The gods of Homer were lascivious and depraved. 
The gods of savages were merely savage chiefs. God, 
therefore, is an image of the mind, and that image is 
ennobled and purified from generation to generation, as 
the mind becomes more noble and more pure. Euro- 
peans believe in eternal punishment, partly because it 
has been taught them in the childhood and because they 
have never considered what it means; partly because 
their imaginations are sluggish, and they are unable to 
realise its cruelty; and partly also, it must be feared, 
because they still have the spirit of revenge and perse- 
cution in their hearts. The author of Job created God 
in the image of an Oriental king, and in the east it is 
believed that all men by nature belong to the king, and 
that he can do no wrong. The Bedouins of the desert 
abhorred incontinence as a deadly sin; but brigandage 
and murder were not by them considered crimes. In 
the Homeric period, piracy was a profession, and vices 
were the customs of the land. The character of a god 
is that of the people who have made him. When, there- 
fore, I expose the crimes of Jehovah, I expose the de- 
fective morality of Israel; and when I criticise the god 
of modern Europe, I criticise the defective intellects of 
Europeans. The reader must endeavour to bear this in 
mind, for, though he may think that his idea of the 
creator is actually the Creator, that belief is not shared 
by me. 

We shall now return to the forest and investigate 
the Origin of Intellect; we shall first explain how the 


CURIOSITY 391 


aptitude for science and for art arose; and next how 
man first became gifted with the moral sense. 

The desire to obtain food induces the animal to 
examine everything of novel appearance which comes 
within its range of observation. The habit is inherited 
and becomes an instinct, irrespective of utility. This 
instinct is Curiosity, which in many animals is so urgent 
a desire that they will encounter danger rather than 
forego the examination of any object which is new and 
strange. This propensity is inherited by man, and again 
passes through a period of utility. When fire is first 
discovered, experiments are made on all kinds of plants, 
with the view of ascertaining what their qualities may 
be. The remarkable knowledge of herbs which savages 
possess; their skill in preparing decoctions which can 
act as medicines or as poisons, which can attract or repel 
wild animals, is not the result of instinct but of ex- 
perience; and, as with the lower animals, the habit of 
food-seeking is developed into curiosity, so the habit of 
searching for edibles, medicine, and poison becomes the 
experimental spirit, the passion of inquiry which ani- 
mates the lifetime of the scientific man, and makes him, 
even in his last hours, observe his own symptoms with 
interest, and take notes on death as it draws near. It 
has been said that genius is curiosity. That instinct 
is at least an element of genius; it is the chief stimulant 
of labour; it keeps the mind alive. 

The artistic spirit is, in the same manner, developed 
from the Imitative instinct, the origin of which is more 
obscure than that of the Inquisitive propensity. How- 
ever, its purpose is clear enough; the young animal 
learns from its parent, by means of imitation, to feec, 
to arrange its toilet with beak or tongue, and to per- 
form all the other offices of life. The hen, for instance, 
when she discovers food, pecks the ground, not to eat, 
but to show her chickens how to eat, and they follow 
her example. The young birds do not sing entirely by 


392 ORIGIN OF ART 


instinct, they receive lessons from their parents. The 
instinct of Imitation, so essential to the young, remains 
more or less with the adult, and outlives its original 
intent. Animals imitate one another, and with the 
monkeys this propensity becomes a mania. It is inher- 
ited by men, with whom even yet it is half an instinct, 
as is shown by the fact that all persons, and especially 
the young, reflect, in spite of their own efforts, the ac- 
cent and the demeanour of those with whom they live. 
This instinct, when adroitly managed, is & means of 
education; it is, in fact, the first principle of progress. 
The Red Indians are not imitative, and they have now 
nearly been destroyed; the negroes imitate like monkeys, 
and what is the result? They are preachers, traders, 
clerks, and artisans, all over the world, and there is no 
reason to suppose that they will remain always in the 
imitative stage. With respect to individuals it is the 
same. Paradoxical as it may appear, it is only the 
imitative mind which can attain originality; the artist, 
must learn to copy before he can create. Mozart began 
by imitating Bach; Beethoven began by copying Mozart. 
Moliére mimicked the Greek dramatists before he learnt 
to draw from the world. The many-sided character of 
Goethe’s mind, which has made him a marvel among 
men, was based upon his imitative instincts; it has been 
said that he was like a chameleon, taking the hue of 
the ground on which he fed. What, in fact, is emula- 
tion but a noble form of imitativeness? Michael 
Angelo saw a man modelling in clay in the garden of 
Lorenzo, and was seized with the desire to become a 
sculptor; and most men who have chosen their own 
vocation could trace its origin in the same way to some 
imitative impulse. 

Among the primeval men this instinct, together with 
wonder and the taste for beauty, explains the origin of 
art. The tendency to reproduce with the hand what- 
ever pleases and astonishes the mind, undoubtedly be- 


ORIGIN OF MUSIC 393 


gins at an early period in the history of man; pictures 
were drawn in the period of the mammoth; I once saw a 
boy from a wild bush tribe look at a ship with aston- 
ishment and then draw it on the sand with a stick. It 
frequently happens in savage life that a man is seized 
with a passion for representing objects and such a 
Giotto is always invited, and perhaps paid, to decorate 
walls and doors. With this wall-painting the fine arts 
began. Next the outlines were engraved with a knife, 
making a figure in relief. Next came a statue with the 
back adhering to the wall, and lastly the sculptured 
figure was entirely detached. In the same manner 
painting was also separated from the wall; and mural 
painting was developed into another form of art. By 
means of a series of pictures a story was told; the 
picture-writing was converted into heiroglyphics, and 
thence into a system of alphabetical signs. Thus the 
statue, the picture, and the book are all descended from 
such figures as those which savages scrawl with char- 
coal on their hut walls, and which seldom bear much 
resemblance to the thing portrayed. The genius of art 
and the genius of science are developed by means of 
priesthoods and religion; but when a certain point has 
been attained, they must be divorced from religion, 
or they will cease to progress. 

And now, finally, with respect to music. There is 
a science of music; but music is not a science. Nor 
is it an imitative art. It is a language. 

Words at first were rather sung than spoken, and 
sentences were rhythmical. The conversation of the 
primeval men was conducted in verse and song: at a 
later period they invented prose; they used a method 
of speech which was less pleasing to the ear, but better 
suited for the communication of ideas. Poetry and 
music ceased to be speech, and became an art, as panto- 
mime, which once was a part of speech, is now an art 
exhibited upon the stage. Poetry and music at first 


394 MUSICAL CONVERSATION 


were one; the bard was a minstrel, the minstrel was 
a bard. The same man was composer, poet, vocalist, 
and instrumentalist, and instrument-maker. He wrote 
the music and the air; as he sang he accompanied him- 
self upon the harp, and he also made the harp. When 
writing came into vogue the arts of the poet and the 
musician were divided, and music again was divided 
into the vocal and the instrumental, and finally instru- 
ment-making became a distinct occupation, to which 
fact may partly be ascribed the superiority of modern 
music to that of ancient times. 

The human language of speech bears the same rela- 
tion to the human language of song as the varied bark 
of the civilised dog to its sonorous howl. There seems 
little in common between the lady who sings at the 
piano and the dog who chimes in with Jaws opened and 
nose upraised; yet each is making use of the primitive 
language of its race: the wild dog can only howl, the 
wild woman can only sing. 

Gestures with us are still used as ornaments of speech, 
and some savage languages are yet in so imperfect a 
condition that gestures are requisite to elucidate the 
words. Gestures are relics of the primeval language, 
and so are musical sounds. With the dog of the savage 
there is much howl in its bark: its voice is in a transi- 
tional condition. The peasants of all countries sing in 
their talk, and savages resemble the people in the opera. 
Their conversation is a “libretto” character: it glitters 
with hyperbole and metaphor, and they frequently 
speak in recitative, chanting or intoning, and ending 
every sentence in a musically sounded O! Often also 
in the midst of conversation, if a man happens to be- 
come excited, he will sing instead of speaking what he 
has to say: the other replies also in song, while the 
company around, as if touched by a musical wave, mur- 
mur a chorus in perfect unison, clapping their hands, 


THE VOICE OF NATURE 395 


undulating their bodies, and perhaps breaking forth into 
a dance. 

Just as the articulate or conventional speech has been 
developed into rich and varied tongues, by means of 
which abstract ideas and delicate emotions can be 
expressed in appropriate terms, so the inarticulate or 
musical speech, the true, the primitive language of our 
race, has been developed with the aid of instruments into 
a rich and varied language of sound in which poems can 
be composed. When we listen to the sublime and mourn- 
ful sonatas of Beethoven, when we listen to the tender 
melodies of Bellini, we fall into a trance; the brain burns 
and swells; its doors fly open; the mind sweeps forth 
into an unknown world where all is dim, dusky, un- 
utterably vast; gigantic ideas pass before us; we at- 
tempt to seize them, to make them our own, but they 
vanish like shadows in our arms. And then, as the 
music becomes soft and low, the mind returns and 
nestles to the heart; the senses are steeped in languor; 
the eyes fill with tears; the memories of the past take 
form; and a voluptuous sadness permeates the soul, 
sweet as the sorrow of romantic youth when the real 
bitterness of life was yet unknown. 

What, then, is the secret of this power in music? 
And why should certain sounds from wood and wire 
thus touch our very heart strings to their tune? It 
is the voice of nature which the great composers com- 
bine into harmony and melody; let us follow it down- 
wards and downwards in her deep bosom, and there we 
discover music, the speech of passion, of sentiment, of 
emotion, and of love; there we discover the divine lan- 
guage in its elements; the sigh, the gasp, the melan- 
choly moan, the plaintive note of supplication, the 
caressing murmur of maternal love, the cry of challenge 
or of triumph, the song of the lover as he serenades 
his mate. 

The spirit of science arises from the habit of seeking 


396 THE WHY . 


food; the spirit of art arises from the habit of imitation, 
by which the young animal first learns to feed; the 
spirit of music arises from primeval speech, by means 
of which males and females are attracted to each other. 
But the true origin of these instincts cannot be ascer- 
tained: it is impossible to account for primary phe- 
nomena. There are some who appear to suppose that 
this world is a Stage-play, and that if we pry into it 
too far, we shall discover ropes and pulleys behind the 
scenes, and that so agreeable illusions will be spoiled. 
But the great masters of modern science are precisely 
those whom nature inspires with most reverence and 
awe. For as their minds are wafted by their wisdom 
into untravelled worlds, they find new fields of knowl- 
edge expanding to the view; the firmament ever expands, 
the abyss deepens, the horizon recedes. The proximate 
Why may be discovered; the ultimate Why is unre- 
vealed. Let us take, for instance, a single law. A slight 
change invigorates the animal; and so the offspring of 
the pair survive the offspring of the single individual. 
Hence the separation of the sexes, desire, affection, 
family-love, combination, gregariousness, clan-love, the 
golden rule, nationality, patriotism, and the religion of 
humanity with all those complex sentiments and emo- 
tions which arise from the fact that one animal is 
dependent on another for the completion of its wants. 
But why should a slight change invigorate the animal? 
And if that question could be answered, we should find 
another why behind. Even when science shall be so far 
advanced, that all the faculties and feelings of men will 
be traced with the precision of a mathematical demon- 
stration to their latent condition in the fiery cloud of 
the beginning, the luminous haze, the nebula of the 
sublime Laplace: even then the origin and purpose of 
creation, the How and the Why will remain unsolved. 
Give me the elementary atoms, the philosopher will ex- 
claim; give me the primeval gas and the law of gravi- 


CLASSIFICATION OF IDEAS 597 


tation, and I will show you how man was evolved, body 
and soul, just as easily as I can explain the egg being 
hatched into a chick. But, then, where did the egg come 
from? Who made the atoms and endowed them with 
the impulse of attraction? Why was it so ordered that 
reason should be born of refrigeration, and that a piece 
of white-hot star should cool into a habitable world, 
and then be sunned into an intellectual salon, as the 
earth will some day be? All that we are doing, and all 
that we can do, is to investigate secondary laws; but 
from these investigations will proceed discoveries by 
which human nature will be elevated, purified, and finally 
transformed. | 

The ideas and sentiments, the faculties and the emo- 
tions, should be divided into two classes; those which 
we have in common with the lower animals, and which 
therefore we have derived from them; and those which 
have been acquired in the human state. Filial, parental, 
and conjugal affection, fellow-feeling and devotion to 
the welfare of the community, are virtues which exist in 
every gregarious association. These qualities, therefore, 
were possessed by the progenitors of man before the 
development of language, before the separation of the 
foot and the hand. Reproduction was once a part of 
growth: animals, therefore, desire to perpetuate their 
species from a natural and innate tendency inherited 
from their hermaphrodite and animalcule days. But 
owing to the separation of the sexes, this instinct cannot 
be appeased except by means of co-operation. In order 
that offspring may be produced, two animals must enter 
into partnership; and in order that offspring may be 
reared, this partnership must be continued a consider- 
able time. All living creatures of the higher grade are 
memorials of conjugal affection and parental care: they 
are born with a tendency to love, for it is owing to 
love that they exist. Those animals that are deficient 
in conjugal desire or parental love, produce or bring up 


398 THE UTILITY OF THE AFFECTIONS 


no offspring, and are blotted out of the book of Nature. 
That parents and children should consort together is 
natural enough; and the family is multiplied into the 
herd. At first the sympathy by which the herd is 
united is founded only on the pleasures of the breeding 
season and the duties of the nest. It is based entirely 
on domestic life. But this sympathy 1s extended and 
intensified by the struggle for existence; herd contends 
against herd, community against community; that herd 
which best combines will undoubtedly survive; and that 
herd in which sympathy is most developed will most 
efficiently combine. Here, then, one herd destroys an- 
other, not only by means of teeth and claws, but also 
by means of sympathy and love. The affections, there- 
fore, are weapons, and are developed according to the 
Darwinian Law. Love is as cruel as the shark’s jaw, 
as terrible as the serpent’s fang. The moral sense is 
founded on sympathy, and sympathy is founded on 
self-preservation. With all gregarious animals, includ- 
ing men, self-preservation is dependent on the preserva- 
tion of the herd. And so, in order that each may 
prosper, they must all combine with affection and 
fidelity, or they will be exterminated by their rivals. 

In the first period of the human herd, co-operation 
was merely instinctive, as it is in a herd of dog-faced 
baboons. But when the intelligence of man was suf- 
ficiently developed, they realised the fact, that the wel- 
fare of each individual depended on the welfare of the 
clan; and that the welfare of the clan depended on the 
welfare of each efficient individual. They then endeav- 
oured to support by laws the interests of the association; 
and, though owing to their defective understandings, 
they allowed, and even enjoined many customs injuri- 
ous to their own welfare, yet, on the whole, they lived 
well and wisely within the circle of their clan. It will 
now be seen, that the moral laws by which we are 
guided are all due to the law of self-preservation. It 


INVENTION OF THE GOLDEN RULE 399 


was considered wicked and wrong to assault, to rob, to 
deceive, or in any way to ill-treat or offend an able- 
bodied member of the clan; for, if he were killed or 
disabled, his services were lost to the clan, and if he 
were made discontented he might desert to another cor- 
poration. But these vices were wrong, merely because 
they were injurious; even murder in the abstract was not 
regarded by them as a sin. They killed their sickly 
children, and dined upon their superannuated parents 
without remorse; for the community was profited by 
their removal. This feeling of fidelity to the clan, 
though, no doubt, often supported by arguments ad- 
dressed to the reason, was not with them a matter of 
calculation. It was rooted in their hearts; it was a 
true instinct inherited from animal and ancient days; it 
was with them an idea of Duty, obedience to which was 
prompted by an impulse, neglect of which was punished 
by remorse. In all fables there is some fact; and the 
legends of the noble savage possess this element of 
truth, that savages within their own communion do live 
according to the golden rule, and would, in fact, be de- 
stroyed by their enemies if they did not. But they are 
not in reality good men. They have no conscience out- 
side their clan. Their virtue after all is only a kind 
of honour amongst thieves. They resemble those illus- 
trious criminals who were excellent husbands and 
fathers, and whose biographies cannot be read without 
a shudder. Yet it is from these people that our minds 
and our morals are descended. The history of morals 
is the extension of the reciprocal or selfish virtues from 
the clan to the tribe, from the tribe to the nation, from 
the nation to all communities living under the same 
government, civil or religious, then to people of the 
same colour, and finally to all mankind. 

In the primitive period, the males contended at the 
courting season for the possession of the females; 
polygamy prevailed, and thus the strongest and most 


400 - CLAN MORALITY 


courageous males were the fathers of all the children 
that were born; the males of the second class died old 
maids. The weakly members of the herd were also un- 
able to obtain their share of food. But when the period 
of brute force was succeeded by the period of Law, it 
was found that the men of sickly frames were often the 
most intelligent, and that they could make themselves 
useful to the clan by inventing weapons and traps, or 
at least by manufacturing them. 

In return for their sedentary labour, they were given 
food; and as they were too weak to obtain wives by 
force, females also were given them; the system of love- 
duels was abolished; the women belonged to the com- 
munity, and were divided fairly, like the food. The 
existence of the clan depended on the number of its 
fighting men, and therefore on the number of children 
that were born. The birth of a male child was a matter 
of rejoicing; the mother was honoured as a public bene- 
factress. Then breeding began to be studied as an art; 
young persons were methodically paired. It was ob- 
served that children inherit the qualities and inclinations 
of their parents, and so the brave and the intelligent 
were selected to be sires. 

If food was scarce and if children were difficult to 
rear, the new-born infants were carefully examined, and 
those that did not promise well were killed. Promiscu- 
ous intercourse on the part of the females was found to 
result in sterility and was forbidden. Cohabitation dur- 
ing the suckling period, which lasted at least three years, 
was supposed to injure the mother’s milk, on which the 
savage baby is entirely dependent; and during that 
period, the woman was set apart. Premature unions 
among children were forbidden, and sometimes pre- 
vented by infibulation, but savages seldom seem to be 
aware that, for the young to marry as soon as the age 
of puberty has been attained, is injurious to the womb 


BREEDING LAWS 401 


and to the offspring. The ancient Germans, however, 
had excellent laws upon this subject. 

Finally the breeders made a discovery from which has 
resulted one of the most universal of moral laws, and 
one which of all laws has been the least frequently 
infringed. Clans made war on foreign clans not only 
for game-preserves, and fish waters, and root, and berry 
grounds, but also for the purpose of making female 
prisoners. A bachelor was expected to catch a wild wife 
for his own benefit, and for that of the community. 
He accordingly prowled round the village of the enemy, 
and when an eligible person came down to the brook to 
fill her pitcher, or went into thé bush to gather sticks, 
he burst: forth from his ambush, knocked her down with 
his club, and carried her off in triumph to his own 
people. It was observed that the foreign wives produced 
more children, and stronger children, than the home- 
born wives, and also that the nearer the blood-relation- 
ship between husband and wife, the more weakly and 
the less frequent were the offspring. On this account a 
law was passed forbidding marriage between those who 
were closely related to one another; sometimes even 
it was forbidden to marry within the tribe at all; and 
all wives were obtained from foreign tribes by means 
of capture or exchange. These laws relating to mar- 
riage, enacted by the elders, and issued as orders of the 
Gods, were at first obeyed by the young merely out of 
fear; but in the second generation, they were ingrained 
on the minds of children, and were taken under the 
protection of the conscience. 

When the clans or families first leagued together in 
order to form a:'town, the conscience of each man was 
confined to his own circle. He left it at home when he 
went out into the town. He considered it laudable to 
cheat his fellow townsmen in a bargain, or to tell them 
clever lies. If he committed a murder or a theft, his 
conscience uttered no reproach. But each Father was 


402 THE FAMILY CONSCIENCE 


responsible for the crimes of the members of his clan; 
he might inflict what punishment he chose on the actual 
offender; but he himself was the culprit in the eyes of 
the law, and was condemned to pay the fine. If the 
municipal government was not fully formed, the injured 
family took its own revenge; it did not seek for the 
thief or murderer himself; the Individual did not exist ; 
all the Family to them were one. No man, therefore, 
could break a law, without exposing his revered father 
and all the members of his family to expense, and even 
to danger of their lives. No savage dares to be unpopu- 
lar at home; the weight of opprobrium is more than 
any man can bear. His happiness depends on the 
approbation of those with whom he lives: there is no 
world for him outside his clan. The town laws were, 
therefore, respected by each man for the sake of his 
Family, and then by a well-known mental process, they 
came to be respected for themselves, and were brought 
under the moral law which was written on the heart. 
Men ceased to be clansmen; they became citizens. 
They next learnt to cherish and protect those foreigners 
who came to trade and who thus conferred a benefit 
upon the town; and at last the great discovery was 
made. Offences against the golden rule are wrong in 
themselves, and displeasing to the gods. It is wicked 
for a man to do that which he would not wish a man 
to do to him; it is wrong for a man to do that to a 
woman which he would not wish done to his sister or 
his wife. Murder, theft, falsehood, and fraud, the in- 
fliction of physical or mental pain, all these from time 
immemorial had been regarded as crimes between clans- 
men and clansmen; they were now regarded as crimes 
between man and man. And here we come to a sin- 
gular fact. The more men are sunk in brutality the 
less frequently they sin against their conscience; and as 
men become more virtuous, they also become more sin- 
ful. With the primeval man the conscience is ap 


| 
\ 





OBIGIN OF SIN 403 


instinct; it is never disobeyed. With the savage the 
conscience demands little; that little it demands under 
pain of death; it is, therefore, seldom disobeyed. The 
savage seldom does that which he feels to be wrong. 
But he does not feel it wrong to commit incest, to eat 
grandfather soup, to kill a sickly child like a kitten, to 
murder any one who lives outside his village. In the 
next period, the matrimonial and religious laws which 
have proceeded from the Science of Breeding and the 
Fear of Ghosts, place a frequent restraint upon his ac- 
tions. He now begins to break the moral law; he com- 
mences a career of sin; yet he is on the whole, a better 
man. We finally arrive at the civilised man; he has 
refined sentiments, and a cultivated intellect; and now, 
scarcely a day passes in which he does not offend 
against his conscience. His life is passed in self- 
reproach. He censures himself for an hour that he has 
wasted; for an unkind word that he has said; for an 
impure thought which he has allowed to settle for a 
moment on his mind. Such lighter sins do not indeed 
trouble ordinary men, and there are few at present 
whose conscience reproaches them for sins against the 
intellect. But the lives of all modern men are tormented 
with desires which may not be satisfied; with propensi- 
ties which must be quelled. The virtues of man have 
originated in Necessity; but necessity developed the 
vices as well. It was essential for the preservation of 
the clan that its members should love one another, and 
live according to the golden rule; men, therefore, are 
born with an instinct of virtue. But it was also essen- 
tial for the existence of the clan that its members should 
be murderers and thieves, crafty and ferocious, fraudu- 
lent and cruel. These qualities, therefore, are trans- 
mitted by inheritance. But as the circle of the clan 
widens, these qualities are rarely useful to their pos- 
sessors, and finally are stigmatised as criminal 
propensities. But because their origin was natural and 


404 DEATH OF SIN 


necessary, their guilt is not lessened an iota. All men 
are born with these propensities; all know that they 
are evil; all can suppress them if they please. There 
are some, indeed, who appear to be criminals by nature; 
who do not feel it wrong to prey upon mankind. These 
are cases of reversion; they are savages or wild beasts; 
they are the enemies of society, and deserve the prison 
to which sooner or later they are sure to come. But 
it is rare indeed that these savage instincts resist a 
kind and judicious education; they may all be stifled 
in the nursery. Life is full of hope and consolation; 
we observe that crime is on the decrease, and that men 
are becoming more humane. The virtues as well as the 
vices are inherited; in every succeeding generation the 
old ferocious impulses of our race will become fainter 
and fainter, and at length they will finally die away. 

There is one moral sentiment which cannot be ascribed 
to the law of Gregarious Preservation, and which is 
therefore of too much importance to be entirely passed 
over, though it cannot here be treated in detail. The 
sense of decorum which is outraged at the exposure of 
the legs in Europe, is as artificial as that which is 
shocked at the exhibition of the female face in the 
East: if the young lady of London thinks that the 
absence of underclothing in the Arab peasant girl “looks 
rather odd,” on the other hand no Arab lady could 
look at her portrait in an evening dress without a feel- 
ing of discomfort and surprise. Yet although the minor 
details of nudity are entirely conventional; although 
complete nudity prevails in some parts of Africa, where 
yet a petticoat grows on every tree, and where the 
people are by no means indifferent to their personal 
appearance, for they spend half their lives upon their 
coiffure; although in most savage countries the unmar- 
ried girl is never permitted to wear clothes; although 
decoration is everywhere antecedent to dress, still the 
traveller does find that a sentiment of decency, though 


ORIGIN OF DECORUM 405 


not universal, is at least very common amongst savage 
people. 

Self-interest here affords an explanation, but not in 
the human state; we must trace back the sentiment to 
its remote and secret source in the animal kingdom. 
Propriety grows out of cleanliness through the associa- 
tion of ideas. Cleanliness is a virtue of the lower 
animals, and is equivalent to decoration; it is nourished 
by vanity, which proceeds from the love of sexual dis- 
play, and that from the desire to obtain a mate; and 
so here we do arrive at utility after all. It is a part 
of animal cleanliness to deposit apart, and even to hide, 
whatever is uncleanly; and men, going farther still, 
conceal whatever is a cause of the uncleanly. The 
Tuaricks of the desert give this as their reason for 
bandaging their mouth; it has, they say, the disgusting 
office of chewing the food, and is therefore not fit to be 
seen. The custom probably originated as a precaution 
against the poisonous wind and the sandy air; yet the 
explanation of the people themselves, though incorrect, 
is not without its value in affording a clue to the oper- 
ations of the savage mind. But the sense of decorum 
must not be used by writers on Mind to distinguish man 
from the lower animals, for savages exist who are as 
innocent of shame and decorum as the beasts and birds. 

There is in women a peculiar timidity, which is due 
to Nature alone, and which has grown out of the mys- 
- terious terror attendant on the functions of reproductive 
life. But the other qualities, physical or mental, which 
we prize in women, are the result of matrimonial 
selection. At first the female was a chattel common to 
all, or belonging exclusively to one, who was by brute 
force the despot of the herd. When property was 
divided and secured by law, the women became the 
slaves of their husbands, hewing the wood, drawing the 
water, working in the fields; while the men sewed and 
washed the clothes, looked after the house, and idled at 


406 MATRIMONIAL SELECTION 


the toilet, oiling their hair, and adorning it with flowers, 
arranging the chignon or the wig of vegetable fibre, 
filing their teeth, boring their ears, putting studs into 
their cheeks, staining their gums, tattooing fanciful de- 
signs upon their skins, tieing strings on their arms to 
give them a rounded form, bathing their bodies in warm 
water, rubbing them with lime-juice and oil, perfuming 
them with the powdered bark of an aromatic tree. Dec- 
oration among the females was not allowed. It was then 
considered unwomanly to engage in any but masculine 
occupations. Wives were selected only for their 
strength. They were hard, coarse, ill-favoured creatures, 
as inferior to the men in beauty as the females are to 
the males almost throughout the animal kingdom. But 
when prisoners of war were tamed and broken in, the 
women ceased to be drudges, and became the ornaments 
of life. Poor men select their domestic animals for 
utility: rich men select them for appearance. In the 
same manner, when husbands became rich they chose 
wives according to their looks. At first the hair of 
women was no longer than that of men, probably not so 
long. But long hair is universally admired. False hair 
is in use all over the world, from the Esquimaux of the 
arctic circle to the negroes of Gaboon. By the con- 
tinued selection of long-haired wives the flowing tresses 
of the sex have been produced. In the same manner the 
elegance of the female form, its softness of complexion, 
its gracefulness of curve are not less our creation than 
the symmetry and speed of the racehorse, the mag- 
nificence of garden flowers, and the flavour of orchard 
fruits. Even the reserved demeanour of women, their 
refined sentiments, their native modesty, their sublime 
unselfishness, and power of self-control are partly due 
to us. The wife was at first a domestic animal like a 
dog or a horse. She could not be used without the con- 
sent of the proprietor; but he was always willing to 
let her out for hire. Among savages it is usually the 


ORIGIN OF JEALOUSY 407 


duty of the host to lend a wife to his stranger guest, 
and if the loan is declined the husband considers him- 
self insulted. Adultery is merely a question of debt. 
The law of debt is terribly severe: the body of the 
insolvent belongs to the creditor to sell or to kill, But 
no other feelings are involved in the question. The 
injured husband is merely a creditor, and is always 
pleased that the debt has been incurred. Petitioner 
and co-respondent may often be seen smoking a friendly 
pipe together after the case has been proved and the 
money has been paid. However, as the intelligence ex- 
pands and the sentiments become more refined, marriage 
is hallowed by religion; adultery is regarded as a shame 
to the husband, and a sin against the gods; and a new 
feeling—Jealousy—enters for the first time the heart of 
man. The husband desires to monopolise his wife, body 
and soul. He intercepts her glances; he attempts to 
penetrate into her thoughts. He covers her with clothes; 
he hides even her face from the public gaze. His 
jealousy, not only anxious for the future, is extended 
over the past. Thus women from their earliest child- 
hood are subjected by the selfishness of man to severe 
but salutary laws. Chastity becomes the rule of female 
life. At first it is preserved by force alone. Male slaves 
are appointed to guard the women who, except some- 
times from momentary pique, never betray one another, 
and are allied against the men. But.as the minds of 
men are gradually elevated and refined through the 
culture of the intellect, there rises within them a senti- 
ment which is unknown in savage life. They conceive 
a contempt for those pleasures which they share with 
the lowest of mankind, and even with the brutes. They 
feel that this instinct is degrading: they strive to resist 
it; they endeavour to be pure. But that instinct is 
strong with the accumulated power of innumerable 
generations; and the noble desire is weak and newly 
born: it can seldom be sustained except by the hopes 


408 ORIGIN OF CHASTITY 


and fears of religion, or by the nobler teaching of 
philosophy. But in women this new virtue is assisted 
by laws and customs which were established, long before, 
by the selfishness of men. Here then, the abhorrence of 
the impure, the sense of duty, the fear of punishment, 
all unite and form a moral law which women them- 
selves enforce, becoming the guardians of their own 
honour, and treating as a traitor to her sex the woman 
who betrays her trust. For her the most compassionate 
have no mercy: she has broken those laws of honour on 
which society is founded. It is forbidden to receive her; 
it is an insult to women to allude to her existence, to 
pronounce her name. She is condemned without in- 
quiry, as the officer is condemned who has shown 
cowardice before the foe. For the life of women is a 
battle-field: virtue is their courage, and peace of mind 
is their reward. It is certainly an extraordinary fact 
that women should be subjected to a severe social dis- 
cipline, from which men are almost entirely exempt. 
As we have shown, it is explained by history; it is due 
to the ancient subjection of women to the man. But 
it is not the women who are to be pitied; it is they who 
alone are free; for by that discipline they are preserved 
from the tyranny of vice. It would be well for men if 
they also were ruled by a severe opinion. The passions 
are always foes, but it is only when they have been 
encouraged that they are able to become masters; it is 
only when they have allied themselves with habit that 
their terrible power becomes known. ‘They resemble 
wild beasts which men feed and cherish until they are 
themselves devoured by their playmates. What miseries 
they cause, how many intellects they paralyze, how many 
families they ruin, how many innocent hearts they break 
asunder, how many lives they poison, how many young 
corpses they carry to the tomb! What fate can be more 
wretched than that of the man who resigns himself to 
them? As to the beautiful mind of Mendelssohn every 


a 


THE PASSIONS 409 


sound, whatever it might be, the bubbling of a brook, 
the rustling of the wind among the trees, the voice of a 
bird, even the grating of a wheel inspired a musical 
idea, so—how melancholy is the contrast!—so—how 
deep is the descent!—so to the mind that is steeped in 
sensuality, every sight, every sound, calls up an impure 
association. The voluptuary dreads to be alone; his 
mind is a monster that exhibits foul pictures to his eyes: 
his memories are temptations: he struggles, he resists, 
but it is all in vain: the habits which once might so 
easily have been broken are now harder than adamant, 
are now stronger than steel: his life is passed between 
desire and remorse: when the desire is quenched he is 
tortured by his conscience: he soothes it with a promise; 
and then the desire comes again. He sinks lower and 
lower until indulgence gives him no pleasure: and yet 
abstinence cannot be endured. To stimulate his jaded 
senses he enters strange and tortuous paths which lead 
him to that awful borderland, where all is darkness, all 
is horror, where vice lies close to crime. Yet there was 
a time when that man was as guileless as a girl: he 
began by learning vice from the example of his com- 
panions, just as he learnt to smoke. Had his education 
been more severe: had the earliest inclinations been 
checked by the fear of ruin and disgrace, he would not 
have acquired the most dangerous of all habits. That men 
should be subjected to the same discipline as women is 
therefore to be wished for: and although the day is far 
distant, there can be no doubt that it will come: and 
the future historian of morals will record with surprise 
that in the nineteenth century society countenanced vices 
in men, which it punished in women with banishment for 
life. Since men are in a transitional condition; since 
Nature ordains that the existence of the race can only 
be preserved by means of gross appetites inherited from 
our ancestors, the animals, it is obvious that men should 
refine them so far as they are able. Thus the brute 


410 THE BENEVOLENCE OF HABIT 


business of eating and drinking is made in civilized life 
the opportunity of social intercourse; the family, divided 
by the duties of the day, then assemble and converse: 
men of talent are drawn together and interchange ideas. 
Many a poem, many an invention, many a great enter- 
prise, has been born at the table; loves and friendships 
have originated there. In the same manner the passions 
are sanctified by marriage. Blended with the pure af- 
fections their coarseness disappears: their violence ig 
appeased: they become the ministers of conjugal and 
parental love. 

If we place exceptions aside, and look at men in the 
mass, we find that, like the animals, they are actively 
employed from morning to night in obtaining food for 
themselves and for their families. But when they have 
satisfied their actual wants, they do not, like the ani- 
mals, rest at their ease: they continue their labour. 
Let us take the life of the ordinary man. He adopts 
an occupation at first in order to get his bread; and 
then that he may marry and have children; and these 
also he has to feed. But that is not all. He soon de- 
sires to rise in his profession, or to acquire such skill in 
his craft that he may be praised by his superiors, and 
by his companions. He desires to make money that he 
may improve his social position. And lastly, he begins 
to love his occupation for itself, whatever it may be: 
the poor labourer has this feeling as well as the poet 
or the artist. When the pleasures of money and fame 
have been exhausted: when nothing remains on earth 
that can bribe the mind to turn from its accustomed 
path, it is Labour itself that is the joy; and aged men 
who have neither desires, nor illusions, who are sepa- 
rated from the world, and who are drawing near to the 
grave, who believe that with life all is ended, and that 
for them there is no hereafter, yet continue to work 
with indefatigable zeal. This noble condition of the 
mind which thus makes for itself a heaven upon earth, 


ee ee a ee 





ORIGIN OF COMMERCE 411 


can be attained by those who have courage and reso- 
lution. It is merely the effect of Habit: labour is 
painful to all at first; but if the student perseveres he 
will find it more and more easy, until at last he will 
find it necessary to his life. The toils which were once 
so hard to endure are now sought and cherished for 
themselves: the mind becomes uneasy when its chains 
are taken off. 

The love of esteem is the second stimulant of labour; 
it follows the period of necessity; it precedes the period 
of habit. It is founded on that feeling of sympathy 
which unites the primeval herd, and which is necessary 
to its life. The man who distinguishes himself in battle; 
the man who brings home a deer, or a fish, or a store 
of honey, or a bundle of roots is praised by his com- 
rades; so he is encouraged to fresh exertions, and so the 
emulation of others is excited. The actions of savages 
are entirely directed by the desire to exist, and by the 
desire to obtain the praises of their fellows. All African 
travellers have suffered from the rapacity of chiefs, and 
yet those same chiefs are the most open-handed of men. 
They plunder and beg from the white man his cloth, in 
order to give it away; and they give it away in order 
to obtain praise. A savage gentleman is always sur- 
rounded by a host of clients, who come every morning 
to give him the salutation, who chant his praises and 
devour him alive. The art of song had its origin in 
flattery. Mendicant minstrels wander from town to 
town, and from chief to chief, singing the praises of 
their patrons and satirizing those who have not been 
generous towards them. In Africa the accusation of 
parsimony is a more bitter taunt than the accusation 
of cowardice. Commerce first commenced in necessity. 
The inland people required salt; the coast people re- 
quired vegetables to eat with their fish. But soon the 
desire of esteem induced men to contrive, and labour, 
and imperil their lives in order to obtain ornaments or 


412 HABIT IN RELIGION 


articles of clothing which came from abroad. In Cen- 
tral Africa it is more fashionable to wear a dirty rag 
of Manchester cloth, such as we use for a duster, than 
their own beautiful aprons of woven grass. An African 
chief will often commission a trader to buy him a hand- 
some saddle, or some curious article of furniture, on 
condition that he will not supply it to any one else, just 
as connoisseurs will pay a higher price for a work of 
art when the mould has been broken. Both in civilized 
and in savage life the selfish desires of men are few, and 
are quickly satisfied. Enormous sums are lavished upon 
cookery and wines, but more from ostentation than from 
true gourmanderies. The love of display, or the more 
noble desire to give pleasure to their friends, has much 
to do with the enthusiasm of those who spend fortunes 
on works of art and objects of virtii; and there are few 
amusements which can be enjoyed alone. Nzhil est 
homini amicum sine homine amico. All the actions of 
men may therefore be traced first to the desire of pre- 
serving life and continuing their species; secondly to the 
desire of esteem; and thirdly to the effects of habit. In 
the religious conduct of man there is nothing which can- 
not be thus explained. First, men sacrifice and pray in 
order to escape sickness and death; or if they are a little 
more advanced, that they may not be punished in a 
future state. Secondly, they desire to win the esteem 
and affections of the gods; they are ambitious of obtain- 
ing a heavenly reputation. And lastly, prayer and 
praise, discipline and self-denial become habits, and give 
pleasure to the mind. The rough hair shirt, the hard 
bed, the cold cell, the meagre food, the long vigil, the 
midnight prayer, are delights to the mind that is inured 
to suffer; and as other men rejoice that they have found 
something which can yield them pleasure, so the ascetic 
rejoices that he has found something which ean yield 
him pain. | 

In the preceding sketch, which is taken from the writ- 


SUMMARY 413 


ings of others, I have told how a hot cloud vibrating 
in space, cooled into a sun rotating on its axis, and 
revolving round a point, to us unknown; and how this 
sun cast off a piece, which went out like a coal that 
leaps from the fire, and sailed round the sun a cinder 
wrapped in smoke; and how as it cooled, strange forces 
worked within it, varied phenomena appeared upon its 
surface; it was covered with a salt sea; the smoke 
cleared off; the sunlight played upon the water; gela- 
tinous plants and animals appeared; at first simple in 
their forms, becoming more complex as the forces which 
acted on them increased in complexity; the earth 
wrinkled up; the mountains and continents appeared; 
rain-water ascended from the sea, and descended from 
the sky; lakes and rivers were created; the land was 
covered with ferns, and gigantic mosses, and grasses 
tall as trees; enormous reptiles crawled upon the earth, 
frogs as large as elephants, which croaked like thunder; 
and the air, which was still poisonous and cloudy, was 
cleared by the plants feeding on the coaly gas; the sun 
shone brightly; sex was invented; love was born; flowers 
bloomed forth, and birds sang; mammoths and masto- 
dons revelled upon the infinity of pastures; the world 
became populous; the struggle for life became severe; 
animals congregated together; male struggled against 
male for spouses, herd struggled against herd for sub- 
sistence; a nation of apes, possessing peculiar intelli- 
gence and sociability, were exposed to peculiar dangers; 
as a means of resistance, they combined more closely; 
as they combined more closely, their language was im- 
proved; as a means of resistance, they threw missiles 
with their hands; thus using their hands, they walked 
chiefly with their feet; the apes became almost man, 
half walking, half crawling through the grim forests, 
jabbering and gesticulating in an imitative manner, 
fighting furiously for their females at the rutting season, 
their matted hair begrimed with dirt and blood, fighting 


414 PERIOD OF WAR 


with all nature, even with their own kind, but remain- 
ing true to their own herd; using the hand more and 
more as a weapon and a tool, becoming more and more 
erect; expressing objects by conventional sounds or 
words; delighting more and more to interchange ideas; 
sharpening stones and pointing sticks, heading javelins 
with bones and horn, inventing snares and traps; then 
Fire was discovered, and, by a series of accidents, its 
various uses were revealed; the arts of agriculture, 
domestication, and river navigation were acquired: the 
tribes migrating from the forests were scattered over 
the world; their canoes of hollow trees skimmed the 
tepid waters of the Indian Ocean; their coracles of skin 
dashed through the icy waves of the Arctic seas; in 
valleys between mountains, or in fertile river plains, 
they nurtured seed-bearing grasses into grain; over pas- 
toral mountains, or sandy deserts or broad grassy 
steppes, they wandered with their flocks and herds; these 
shepherd tribes poured down on the plains, subdued the 
inhabitants and reduced them to serfdom; thus the 
nation was established, and consisted at first of two 
great classes—the rulers and the ruled. 

The period thus rapidly described, which begins with 
the animal globules preying on the plant globules in the 
primeval sea, and which ends with the conquest by the 
carnivorous shepherds of the vegetable eaters in the river 
plains, may be termed the period of War. Throughout 
that period mind was developed by necessity. The lower 
animals merely strive to live, to procure females, and 
to rear their young. It is so ordered by nature, that by 
so striving to live they develop their physical structure; 
they obtain faint glimmerings of reason; they think and 
deliberate, they sympathise and love; they become Man. 
In the same way the primeval men have no other object 
than to keep the clan alive. It is so ordered by nature, 
that, in striving to preserve the existence of the clan, 
they not only acquire the arts of agriculture, domestica- 


PERIOD OF RELIGION 415 


tion, and navigation; they not only discover fire, and its 
uses in cooking, In war and in metallurgy; they not 
only detect the hidden properties of plants, and apply 
them to save their own lives from disease, and to de- 
stroy their enemies in battle; they not only learn to 
manipulate Nature, and to distribute water by ma- 
chinery; but they also, by means of the long life-batile, 
are developed into moral beings: they live according to 
the golden rule, in order that they may exist, or, in 
other words, they do exist because they live according 
to the golden rule. They have within them innate 
affections, which are as truly weapons as the tiger’s 
teeth and the serpent’s fang; which belong, therefore, 
to the period of War. Their first laws, both social and 
religious, are enacted only as war measures. The laws 
relating to marriage and property are intended to in- 
crease the fertility and power of the clan; the laws re- 
lating to religion are intended to preserve the clan from 
the fury of the gods, against whom, at an earlier period, 
they actually went to war. But out of this feeling of 
sympathy, which arose in necessity, arises a secondary 
sentiment, the Love of Esteem; and hence wars, which 
at first were waged merely in self-defence, or to win 
food-grounds and females necessary for the subsistence 
and perpetuation of the clan, are now waged for super- 
fluities, power, and the love of glory; commerce, which 
was founded in necessity, is continued for the acquisition 
of ornaments and luxuries; science, which at first was 
a means of life, provides wealth, and is pursued for 
fame; music and design, which were originally instincts 
of the hand and voice, are developed into arts. It is 
therefore natural for man to endeavour to better him- 
self in life, that he may obtain the admiration of his 
comrades. He desires to increase his means or to win 
renown in the professions and the arts. Thus man 
presses upon man, and the whole mass rises in knowl- 
edge, in power, and in wealth. But owing to the division 


416 PERIOD OF LIBERTY 


of classes resulting from war, and also from the natural 
inequality of man, the greater part of the human popu- 
lation could not obey their instinctive aspirations; they 
were condemned to remain stationary and inert. By 
means of caste, slavery, the system of privileged classes, 
and monopolies, the People were forbidden to raise 
themselves in life; they were doomed to die as they 
were born. But that they might not be altogether with- 
out hope, they were taught by their rulers that they 
would be rewarded with honour and happiness in a 
future state. The Egyptian fellah received the good 
tidings that there was no caste after death; the Chris- 
tian serf was consoled with the text, that the poor would 
inherit the kingdom of heaven. This long and gloomy 
period of the human race may be entitled Religion. 
History is confined to the upper classes. All the dis- 
coveries, and inventions, and exploits of ancient times 
are due to the efforts of an aristocracy; not only the 
Persians and Hindoos, but also the Greeks and the 
Romans were merely small societies of gentlemen reign- 
ing over a multitude of slaves. The virtues of the lower 
classes were loyalty, piety, obedience. The third 
period is that of Liberty: it belongs only to Europe and 
to modern times. A middle class of intelligence and 
wealth arises between the aristocracy and the plebeians. 
They contend with the monopolies of caste and birth; 
they demand power for themselves; they espouse the 
cause of their poorer brethren; they will not admit that 
equality in heaven is a valid reason for inequality on 
earth; they deny that the aristocracy of priests know 
more of divine matters than other men; they interpret 
the sacred books for themselves, and translate them into 
the vulgar tongue; they separate religion from temporal 
government, and reduce it to a system of metaphysics 
and morality. It is in this period that we are at present. 
Loyalty to the king has been transformed into patriot- 
ism; and Piety, or the worship of God, will give way 


PERIOD OF INTELLECT 417 


to the reverence of Law and the love of mankind. Thus 
the mind will be elevated, the affections deepened and 
enlarged; morality ceasing to be entangled with theology, 
will be applied exclusively to virtue. 

It is difficult to find a title for the fourth period, 
as we have as yet no word which expresses at the same 
time the utmost development of mind, and the utmost 
development of morals. I have chosen the word Jntel- 
lect, because by the education of the intellect the moral 
sense is of necessity improved. In this last period the 
destiny of Man will be fulfilled. He was not sent upon 
earth to prepare himself for existence in another world; 
he was sent upon earth that he might beautify it as a 
dwelling, and subdue it to his use; that he might exalt 
his intellectual and moral powers until he had attained 
perfection, and had raised himself to that ideal which 
he now expresses by the name of God, but which, how- 
ever sublime it may appear to our weak and imperfect 
minds, is far below the splendour and majesty of that 
Power by whom the universe was made. 

We shall now leave the darkness of the primeval times, 
and enter the theatre of history. The Old World is a 
huge body, with its head buried in eternal snows; with 
the Atlantic on its left, the Pacific on its right, the 
Indian Ocean between its legs. The left limb is sound 
and whole; its foot is the Cape of Good Hope. The right 
limb has been broken and scattered by the sea; Australia 
and the Archipelago are detached; Asia has been ampu- 
tated at the thigh. The lower extremities of this Old 
World are covered for the most part with thorny thick- 
ets and with fiery plains. The original natives were 
miserable creatures, living chiefly on insects and shells, 
berries and roots; casting the boomerang and the bone- 
pointed dart; abject, naked, brutish and forlorn. We 
pass up the body in its ancient state; through the marsh 
of central Africa, with its woolly-haired blacks upon 
the left, and through the jungles of India, with its 


418 ABORIGINES OF EUROPE 


straight-haired blacks upon the right; through the sandy 
wastes of the Sahara, and the broad Asiatic tablelands; 
through the forest of Central Europe, the Russian 
steppes, and the Siberian plains, until we arrive at the 
frozen shores of the open Polar Sea. The land is cov- 
ered with fields of snow, on which white bears may be 
seen in flocks like sheep. Ice mountains tower in the 
air, and, as the summer approaches, glide into the ocean 
and sail towards the south. The sky is brightened by 
a rosy flame, which utters a crisp and crackling sound. 
All else is silent, nature is benumbed. The signs of 
human habitation are rare; sometimes a tribe of Esqui- 
maux may be perceived, dwelling in snow huts, en- 
veloped in furs, driving sledges with teams of dogs, 
tending their herds of reindeer on the moss-grounds, or 
dashing over the cold waters in their canoes to hunt 
the walrus and the seal. 

This gloomy region, where the year is divided into 
one day and one night, lies entirely outside the stream 
of history. We descend through the land of the pine 
to the land of the oak and beech. Huge woods and 
dismal fens covered Europe in the olden time; by the 
banks of dark and sullen rivers the beavers built their 
villages; the bears and the wolves were the aristocracy 
of Europe; men paid them tribute in flesh and blood. 
A people, apparently of Tartar origin, had already 
streamed into this continent from Asia; but the true 
aborigines were not extinct; they inhabited huts built 
on piles in the lakes of Switzerland; they herded to- 
gether in mountain caves. They were armed only with 
stone weapons; but they cultivated certain kinds of 
grain, and had tamed the reindeer, the ox, the boar, 
and the dog. In ancient history Europe has no place. 
Even the lands to the south of the Alps were inhabited 
by savages at a time when Asia was in a civilised 
condition. 

It is therefore Asia that we must first survey; it is 


THE SEMITIC RACE 419 


there that the history of books and monuments begins. 
The Tigris and Euphrates rise in a table-land adjoining 
the Black Sea, and flow into the Persian Gulf. On 
the right is a desert extending to the Nile; on the 
left, a chain of hills. A shepherd people descended 
from the plateau, occupied the land between the rivers, 
the plains between the Tigris and the hills, and the 
alluvial regions at the lower course of the Euphrates. 
They wandered over the Arabian desert with their flocks 
and herds, settled in Canaan and Yemen, crossed over 
into Africa, extended along its northern shores as far as 
the Atlantic, overspread the Sahara, and made border 
wars upon Soudan. In the course of many centuries the 
various branches of this people diverged from one an- 
other. In Barbary and Saraha they were called Ber- 
bers; in the valley of the Nile, Egyptians; Arabs, in 
the desert and in Yemen; Canaanites, in Palestine; As- 
syrians, in Mesopotamia and the upper regions of the 
Tigris; Chaldeans or Babylonians, in the lower course 
of the Euphrates. The Canaanites, the Arabs of Yemen, 
and the Berbers of Algeria adopted agricultural habits 
and lived in towns; the Berbers of Sahara, the Bedouins 
of the Syro-Arabian desert, and of the waste regions in 
Assyria remained a {pastoral and wandering people. 
but in Chaldza and in Egypt, the colonists were placed 
under peculiar conditions. Famines impelled the shep- 
herds to make war on other tribes; famines impelled the 
Chaldeans and Egyptians to contend with the Euphrates 
and the Nile, to domesticate the waters, to store them 
in reservoirs, and to distribute them, as required, upon 
the fields. It is not improbable that the Egyptians were 
men of Babylonia driven by war or by exile into the 
African deserts; that they were composed of two noble 
classes, the priests and the military men; that they 
took with them some knowledge of the arts and sciences, 
which they afterwards developed into the peculiar Egyp- 
tian type; that they found the valley inhabited by a 


420 THE EGYPTIANS 


negro race, fishing in papyrus canoes, living chiefly on 
the lotus root, and perhaps growing doura corn; that 
they reduced those negroes to slavery, divided them into 
castes, allowed them to retain in each district the form 
of animal worship peculiar to the respective tribes, mak- 
ing such worship emblematical, and blending it with 
their own exalted creed; and finally, that they married 
the native women,*which would thus account for the 
dash of the tar-brush plainly to be read by the practised 
eye in the portraits, though not in the conventional 
faces of the monuments. On the other hand it may be 
held that Egypt was colonised by a Berber tribe; that 
its civilization was entirely indigenous; that the dis- 
tinction of classes arose from natural selection, and was 
afterwards petrified by law, and that the negro traits 
in the Egyptian physiognomy were due to the importa- 
tion of Ethiopian girls, who have always been favour- 
ites in the harems of the east. But whichever of these 
hypotheses may be true, the essential point is this, that 
civilisation commenced in the application of mechanics 
to the cultivation of the fields, and that this science 
could only have been invented under pressure of 
necessity. 

Let us now pass beyond the Tigris and climb up the 
hills which bound it on the left. We find ourselves 
on the steppes of Central Asia, in some parts lying 
waste in salt and sandy plains, in others clothed with 
fields of waving grass. Over these broad regions 
roamed the Turks or Tartars, living on mares’ milk, 
dwelling in houses upon wheels. Beyond the steppes 
towards the Hast is another chain of hills, and beyond 
them lies the Great Plain of China, watered by two 
majestic rivers, the Yang-tse-Kiang, and the Hoang Ho. 
The people of the steppes and the mountains poured 
down upon this country, subdued the savage aborigines, 
covered the land with rice fields, irrigated by canals, 
and established many kingdoms which were afterwards 


TURANIANS AND ARYANS 421 


blended into one harmonious and civilised empire. 

To the right hand of the Tartar steppes as you 
travel towards China, is a lofty table-land, the region 
of the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes. Thence de- 
scended a people who called themselves the Aryas, or 
“the noble;” they differed much in appearance from 
the slit-eyed, smooth-faced, and fleshy-limbed Mon- 
gols; and little in appearance, but widely in language 
from the people of the table-land of the Tigris and 
Euphrates. They poured forth in successive streams 
over Persia, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and the whole 
of Europe from the Danube and the Rhine to the shores 
of the Atlantic. They also descended on the Punjaub, 
or country of the Indus, where they established their 
first colony, and thence spread to the region of the 
Ganges, and over the Deccan. They intermarried much 
with the native women, but divided the men into servile 
castes, and kept them in subjection, partly by means of 
an armed aristocracy, partly by means of religious 
terror. ; 

These then are the elemental lands; China, India, 
Babylonia, and Egypt. In these countries, civilization 
was invented; history begins with them. The Egyp- 
tians manufactured linen goods, and beautiful glass 
wares, and drew gold, ivory, and slaves from the Sou- 
dan. Babylonia manufactured tapestry and carpets. 
These people were known to one another only by their 
products; the wandering Bedouins carried the trade 
between the Euphrates and the Nile. A caravan route 
was also opened between Babylon and India wa Bok- 
hara or Balkh and Samarcand. India possessed much 
wealth in precious stones, but the true resources of 
that country were its vegetable products and the skilful 
manufactures of the natives. India, to use their own 
expression, sells grass for gold. From one kind of plant 
they extracted a beautiful blue dye; from another 
they boiled a juice, which cooled into a crystal, deli- 


422 THE INDIAN OCEAN 


cate and luscious to the taste; from another they ob- 
tained a kind of wool, which they spun, wove, bleached, 
glazed, and dyed into fabrics transparent as the gos- 
samer, bright as the plumage of the jungle birds. And 
India was also the half way station between China, 
Ceylon, and the Spice Islands on the one hand, and of 
the countries of Western Asia on the other. It was 
enriched not only by its own industry and produce, 
but by the transit trade as well. At an early epoch 
in history, the Chinese became a great navigating 
people; they discovered America, at least, so they say; 
they freighted their junks with cargoes of the shining 
fibre, and with musk in porcelain jars; they coasted 
along the shores of the Pacific, established colonies in 
Birmah and Siam, developed the spice trade of the 
Indian Archipelago, and the resources of Ceylon, sailed 
up the shores of Malabar, entered the Persian gulf, 
and even coasted as far as Aden and the Red Sea. It 
was probably from them that the Banians of Guezerat 
and the Arabs of Yemen acquired the arts of shipbuild- - 
ing and navigation. The Indian Ocean became a basin 
of commerce; it was whitened by cotton sails. The 
Pheenicians explored the desolate waters of the Medi- 
terranean Sea; with the bright red cloth, and the 
blue bugles, and the speckled beads, they tempted the 
savages of Italy and Greece to trade; they discovered 
the silver mines of Spain; they sailed forth through the 
Straits of Gibraltar, they braved the storms of the 
Atlantic, opened the tin trade of Cornwall, established 
the amber diggings of the Baltic. Thus a long thread 
of commerce was stretched across the Old World from 
England and Germany to China and Japan. Yet, still 
the great countries in the central region dwelt in haughty 
isolation, knowing foreign lands only by their products, 
until the wide conquests and the superb administrations 
of the Persians made them members of the same com- 
munity. China alone remained outside. Egypt, Baby- 


THE MEDITERRANEAN 423 


lonia, and India were united by royal roads with 
half-way stations in Palestine, and Bokhara, and with 
sea-ports in Pheenicia, and on the western coast of Asia 
Minor. That country is a table-land belted on all 
sides by mountains; but beneath the wall of hills on 
the western side is a fruitful strip of coast, the estuary 
land of four rivers which flow into the Mediterranean 
parallel to one another. That coast is Ionia; and 
opposite to Ionia lies Greece. The table-land was oc- 
cupied by an Aryan or Arya nation, from whom bands 
of emigrants went forth in two directions. The 
Dorians crossed the Hellespont, and passing through 
Thrace, settled in the hill cantons of Northern Greece, 
and thence spread over the lower parts of the peninsula. 
The Ionians descended to the fruitful western coast, 
and thence migrated into Attica which afterwards sent 
back colonies to its ancient birth-place. These two 
people spoke the same language, and were of the same 
descent; but their characters differed as widely as the 
cold and barren mountains from the soft and smiling 
plains. The Dorians were rude in their manners, and 
laconic in their speech, barbarous in their virtues, 
morose in their joys. The Ionians lived among holidays, 
they could do nothing without dance and song. The 
Dorians founded Sparta, a republic which was in reality 
a camp, consisting of soldiers fed by slaves. The girls 
were educated to be viragoes; the boys to bear torture, 
like the Red Indians, with a smile. The wives were 
breeding-machines, belonging to the state; a council of 
elders examined the new-born children, and selected 
only the finer specimens, in order to keep up the good 
old Spartan breed. They had no commerce, and no 
arts; they were as filthy in their persons as they were 
narrow in their minds. But the Athenians were the 
true Greeks, as they exist at the present day; intellec- 
tual, vivacious, inquisitive, shrewd, artistic, patriotic, 
and dishonest; ready to die for their country, or to 


424 GREECE 


defraud it. The Greeks received the first rudiments of 
knowledge from Pheenicia; the alphabet was circulated 
throughout the country by means of the Olympian fairs; 
colonies were sent forth all round the Mediterranean; 
and those of Ionia and the Delta of the Nile, obtained 
partial access to the arts and sciences of Babylon and 
Memphis. The Persian wars developed the genius of 
the Greeks. The Persian conquests opened to them the 
University of Egypt. The immense area of the Greek 
world, extending from the Crimea to the straits of 
Gibraltar, for at one time the Greeks had cities in 
Morocco; the variety of ideas which they thus gathered, 
and which they interchanged at the great Festival, 
where every kind of talent was honoured and rewarded; 
the spirit of noble rivalry which made city contend with 
city, and citizen with citizen, in order to obtain an 
Olympian reputation; the complete freedom from theol- 
ogy in art: the tastes and manners of the land; the 
adoration of beauty; the nudity of the gymnasium; all 
these sufficiently explain the unexampled progress of 
the nation, and the origin of that progress, as in all other 
cases, is to be found in physical geography. Greece 
was divided into natural cantons; each state was a 
fortress; while Egypt, Assyria, India, and China were 
wide and open plains, which cavalry could sweep, and 
which peasants with their sickles could not defend. 
But the rivalry of the Greeks among themselves, so 
useful to the development of mental life, prevented them 
from combining into one great nation; and Alexander, 
although he was a Greek by descent, for he had the 
right of contending at the Olympian games, conquered 
the east with an army of barbarians, his Greek troops 
being merely a contingent. But the kingdoms of Asia 
and Egypt were Greek, and in Alexandria the founda- 
tions of science were laid. The astrolabes which had 
been invented by the Egyptians were improved by the 
Greeks and afterwards by the Arabs, were adapted to 


ALEXANDRIA 425 


purposes of navigation by the Portuguese, and were de- 
veloped to the sextant of the nineteenth century. The 
Egyptians had invented the blow-pipe, the crucible, and 
the alembic; the Alexandrines commenced or continued 
the pursuit of alchemy, which the Arabs also preserved, 
and which has since grown into the science of Lavoisier, 
and Faraday. Hippocrates separated medicine from 
theology; his successors dissected and experimentalised 
at Alexandria, learning something no doubt from the 
Egyptian school; the Arabs followed in a servile 
manner the medicine of the Greeks; and the modern 
Europeans, obtained from the Canon of Avicenna the 
first elements of a science which has made much 
progress, but which is yet in its infancy, and which 
will some day transform us into new beings. The 
mathematical studies of the Alexandrines were also 
serviceable to mankind, and the work of one of their 
professors is a text-book in this country; they discov- 
ered the Precession of the Equinoxes; and the work 
which they did in Conic Sections enabled Kepler to dis- 
cover the true laws of the planetary motions. But 
Alexandria did not possess that liberty which is the true 
source of continued progress. With slaves below and 
with despots above, the mind was starved in its roots, 
and stifled in its bud, dried and ticketed in a museum. 
The land itself had begun to languish and decay, when 
a new power arose in the west. The foot of Italy was 
lined with Greek towns, and these had spread culture 
through the peninsula, among a people of a kindred 
race. They dwelt in cities, with municipal governments, 
public buildings, and national schools. One Italian city, 
founded by desperadoes, adopted a career of war; but 
the brigands were also industrious farmers and wise 
politicians; they conciliated the cities whom they con- 
quered. Rome became a supreme republic, ruling a 
number of minor republics, whose municipal preroga- 
tives were left undisturbed, who paid no tribute save 


426 ROME 


military service. The wild Gauls of Lombardy were 
subdued. The Greeks on the coast were the only for- 
eigners who retained their freedom in the land. They 
called over Pyrrhus to protect them from the Romans; 
but the legion conquered the phalanx, the broadsword 
vanquished the Macedonian spear. The Asiatic Cartha- 
ginians were masters of the sea; half Sicily belonged 
to them; they were, therefore, neighbours of the Ro- 
mans. They had already menaced the cities of the 
southern coast; the Romans were already jealous and 
distrustful; they had now a Monroe doctrine concerning 
the peninsula: an opportunity occurred, and they 
stepped out into the world. The first Punic war gave 
them Sicily, the second Punic war gave them Spain, the 
third Punic war gave them Africa. Rome also extended 
her power towards the East. She did not invade, she 
did not conquer, she did not ask for presents and taxes, 
she merely offered her friendship and protection. She 
made war, it is true, but only on behalf of her allies. 
And so kingdom after kingdom, province after province, 
fell into her vast and patient arms. She became at 
first the arbiter and afterwards the mistress of the 
world. Her legions halted only on the banks of the 
Euphrates, and on the shores of the Sahara, where a 
wild waste of sand and a sea-horizon appeared to pro- 
claim that life was at an end. She entered the unknown 
world beyond the Alps, established a chain of forts along 
the banks of the Danube and the Rhine from the Black 
Sea to the Baltic, covered France with noble cities, and 
made York a Roman town. The Latin language was 
planted in all the countries which this people conquered, 
except in those where Alexander had preceded them. 
The empire was therefore divided by language into the 
Greek and Latin world. Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and 
Egypt belonged to the Greek world: Italy, Africa, 
Spain, and Gaul belonged to the Latin world. But the 
Roman law was everywhere in force, though not to the 


THE REPUBLIC 427 


extinction of the native laws. In Egypt, for instance, 
the Romans revived some of the wise enactments of 
the Pharaohs which had been abrogated by the Ptol- 
emies. The old courts of injustice were swept away. 
Tribunals were established which resembled those of the 
English in India. Men of all races, and of all religions, 
came before a judge of a foreign race, who sat high 
above their schisms and dissensions, who looked down 
upon them all with impartial contempt, and who rev- 
erenced the law which was entrusted to his care. But 
the provinces were forced to support not only a court 
but a city. As London is the market of England, to 
which the best of all things find their way, so Rome 
was the market of the Mediterranean world; but there 
was this difference between the two, that in Rome the 
articles were not paid for. Money, indeed, might be 
given, but it was money which had not been earned, 
and which therefore would come to its end at last. 
Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the 
face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and 
there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road 
was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the 
great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble 
of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of 
Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought nothing out 
but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. Lon- 
don turns dirt into gold. Rome turned gold into dirt. 
And how, it may be asked, was the money spent? The 
answer is not difficult to give. Rome kept open house. 
It gave a dinner party every day; the emperor and 
his favourites dined upon nightingales and flamingo 
tongues, on oysters from Britain, and on fishes from the 
Black Sea; the guards received their rations; and bacon, 
wine, oil, and loaves were served out gratis to the 
people. Sometimes entertainments were given in which 
a collection of animals as costly as that in Regent’s Park 
was killed for the amusement of the people. Constan- 


428 ROME AND CHINA 


tine transferred the capital to Constantinople; and now 
two dinners were given every day. Egypt found the 
bread for one, and Africa found it for the other. The 
governors became satraps, the peasantry became serfs, 
the merchants and landowners were robbed and ruined, 
the empire stopped payment, the legions of the frontier 
marched on the metropolis, the dikes were deserted, and 
then came the Deluge. The empire had been already 
divided. There was an empire of the West, or the Latin 
world; there was an empire of the East, or the Greek 
world. The first was overrun by the Germans, the 
second by the Arabs. But Constantinople remained un- 
conquered throughout the dark ages; and Rome, though 
taken and sacked, was never occupied by the barbarians. 
In these two great cities the languages and laws of the 
classical times were preserved; and from Rome religion 
was diffused throughout Europe; to Rome a spiritual 
empire was restored. The condition of the Roman world 
at one time bore a curious resemblance to that of China. 
In each of these great empires, separated by a continent, 
the principal feature was that of peace. Vast popula- 
tions dwelt harmoniously together, and were governed 
by admirable laws. The frontiers of each were threat- 
ened by barbarians. The Chinese built a wall along the 
outskirts of the steppes; the Romans built a wall along 
the Danube and the Rhine. In China, a man dressed 
in yellow received divine honours; in Rome, a man 
dressed in purple received divine honours; in each coun- 
try the religion was the religion of the state, and the 
emperor was the representative of God. In each coun- 
try, also, a religious revolution occurred. A young 
Indian prince, named Sakya Muni, afflicted by the 
miseries of human life which he beheld, cast aside his 
wealth and his royal destiny, became a recluse, and 
devoted his life to the study of religion. After long 
years of reading and reflection he took the name of 
Buddha, or “the Awakened.” He declared that the soul 


THE BUDDHISTS 429 


after death migrates into another form, according to its 
deeds and according to its thoughts. This was the 
philosophy of the Brahmins. But he also proclaimed 
that all existence is passion, misery, and pain, and that 
by subduing the evil emotions of the heart, the soul will 
hereafter finally obtain the calm of non-existence, the 
peaceful Nirwana, the unalloyed, the unclouded Not to 
Be. A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, 
could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind 
if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Bud- 
dhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its 
beautiful morality. The men who laboured in the fields 
had always been taught that the Brahmins were the 
aristocracy of heaven, and would be as high above 
them in a future state as they were upon the earth. 
The holy books which God had revealed were not for 
them, the poor dark-skinned labourers, to read; burn- 
ing oil poured into their ears was the punishment by 
law for so impious an act. And now came a man who 
told them that those books had not been revealed at 
all, and that God was no respecter of persons; that the 
happiness of men in a future state depended, not upon 
their birth, but upon their actions and their thoughts. 
Buddhism triumphed for a time in Hindostan, but its 
success was greatest amongst the stranger natives in 
the north-west provinces, the Indo-Scythians and the 
Greeks. Then came a period of patriotic feeling; the 
Brahmins preached a War of Independence; the new 
religion was associated with the foreigners, and both 
were driven out together. But Buddhism became the 
religion of Ceylon, Birmah, and Siam, and finally en- 
tered the Chinese Empire. It suffered and survived 
bloody persecutions. It became a licensed religion, and 
spread into the steppes of Tartary among those bar- 
barians by whom China was destined to be conquered. 
The religion of the Buddhists was transformed; its 
founder was worshipped as a God; there was a doctrine 


430 THE PAGANS 


of the Incarnation; they had their own holy books, 
which they declared to have been revealed; they estab- 
lished convents and nunneries, splendid temples, 
adorned with images, and served by priests with shaven 
heads, who repeated prayers upon rosaries, and who 
taught that happiness in a future state could best be 
obtained by long prayers and by liberal presents to the 
Church. At the period of the importation of Buddhism 
into China, a similar event occurred in the Roman 
world. It was the pagan theory that each country was 
governed by its own gods. The proper religion for each 
man, said an oracle of Delphi, is the religion of his 
fatherland. Yet these gods were cosmopolitan; they 
punished or rewarded foreigners. Imilkon having of- 
fended the Greek gods in the Sicilian wars, made atone- 
ment to them when he returned to Carthage: he offered 
sacrifices in the Pheenician temples, but according to 
the milder ceremonies of the Greeks. The Philistines 
sent back the ark with a propitiatory present to 
Jehovah. Alexander, in Asia Minor, offered sacrifices 
to the gods of the enemy. The Romans, when they be- 
sieged a town, called upon its tutelary god by name, 
and offered him bribes to give up the town. Rome 
waged war against the world, but not against the gods; 
she did not dethrone them in their own countries; she 
offered them the freedom of the city. Men of all races 
came to live in Rome; they were allowed to worship 
their own gods; the religions of the Empire were regu- 
larly licensed; Egyptian temples and Syrian chapels 
sprang up in all directions. But though the Romans 
considered it right that Egyptians should worship Isis, 
and that Alexandrines should worship Serapis, they 
justly considered it a kind of treason for Romans to 
desert their tutelary gods. For this reason, foreign re- 
ligions were sometimes proscribed. It was also required 
from the subjects of the empire that they should offer 
homage to the gods of Rome, and to the genius or spirit 


THE JEWS 431 


of the emperor; not to the man, but to the soul that 
dwelled within. The Jews alone were exempt from these 
regulations. It was believed that they were a peculiar 
people, or rather that they had a peculiar god. While 
the other potentates of the celestial world lived in har- 
mony together, Jehovah was a sullen and solitary being, 
who separated his people from the rest of mankind, 
forbade them to eat or drink with those who were not 
of their own race, and threatened to punish them if 
they worshipped any gods but him. On this account the 
Roman government, partly to preserve the lives of their 
subjects, and partly out of fear for themselves, believ- 
ing that Jehovah, like the other gods, had always an 
epidemic at his command, treated the Jews with excep- 
tional indulgence. These people were scattered over all 
the world; they had their Ghetto or Petticoat Lane in 
every great city of the empire; their religion, so superior 
to that of the pagans, had attracted much attention 
from the Gentiles. Ovid, in his Art of Love, counsels 
the dandy who seeks a mistress to frequent the theatre, 
or the Temple of Isis, or the synagogue on the Sabbath 
day. But the Jews in Rome, like the Jews in London, 
did not attempt to make proselytes, and received them 
with reluctance and distrust. Their sublime faith, di- 
vested of its Asiatic customs, was offered to the Romans 
by some Jewish heretics called Christians or Nazarenes. 
A young man named Joshua or Jesus, a carpenter by 
trade, believed that the world belonged to the devil, 
and that God would shortly take it from him, and that 
he the Christ or Anointed would be appointed by God 
to judge the souls of men, and to reign over them on 
earth. In politics he was a leveller and communist, in 
morals he was a monk; he believed that only the poor 
and the despised would inherit the kingdom of God. 
All men who had riches or reputations would follow 
their dethroned master into everlasting pain. He at- 
tacked the church-going, sabbatarian, ever-praying 


432 JESUS 


Pharisees; he declared that piety was worthless if it 
were praised on earth. It was his belief that earthly 
happiness was a gift from Satan, and should therefore 
be refused. If a man was poor in this world, that was 
good; he would be rich in the world to come. If he were 
miserable and despised, he had reason to rejoice; he 
was out of favour with the ruler of this world, namely 
Satan, and therefore he would be favoured by the new 
dynasty. On the other hand, if a man were happy, rich, 
esteemed, and applauded, he was for ever lost. He 
might have acquired his riches by industry; he might 
have acquired his reputation by benevolence, honesty, 
and devotion; but that did not matter; he had received 
his reward. So Christ taught that men should sell all 
that they had and give to the poor; that they should 
renounce all family ties; that they should let to-morrow 
take care of itself; that they should not trouble about 
clothes: did not God adorn the flowers of the fields? 
he would take care of them also if they would fold 
their hands together and have faith, and abstain from 
the impiety of providing for the future. The principles 
of Jesus were not conducive to the welfare of society ; 
he was put to death by the authorities; his disciples 
established a commune; Greek Jews were converted by 
them, and carried the new doctrines over all the world. 
The Christians in Rome were at first a class of men 
resembling the Quakers. They called one another 
brother and sister; they adopted a peculiar garb, and 
peculiar forms of speech; the church was at first com- 
posed of women, slaves, and illiterate artisans; but it 
soon became the religion of the people in the towns. All 
were converted excepting the rustics (pagani), and the 
intellectual free-thinkers, who formed the aristocracy. 
Christianity was at first a republican religion; it pro- 
claimed the equality of souls; the bishops were the 
representatives of God, and the bishops were chosen by 
the people. But when the emperor adopted Chris- 


THE CHRISTIANS 433, 


tianity and made it a religion of the state, it became a 
part of imperial government, and the parable of Dives 
was forgotten. The religion of the Christians was 
transformed; its founder was worshipped as a god; there 
was a doctrine of the Incarnation; they had their own 
holy books, which they declared to have been revealed; 
they established convents, and nunneries, and splendid 
temples, adorned with images, and served by priests 
with shaven heads, who repeated prayers upon rosaries, 
and who taught that happiness in a future state could 
best be obtained by long prayers and by liberal presents 
to the Church. In the Eastern or Greek world, Chris- 
tianity in no way assisted civilisation, but in the Latin 
world it softened the fury of the conquerors, it aided the 
amalgamation of the races. The Christian priests were 
reverenced by the barbarians, and these priests belonged 
to the conquered people. The Church, it is true, was 
divided by a schism; Ulphilas, the apostle of the Goths, 
was an Arian; the dispute which had arisen in a lecture- 
room at Alexandria, between a bishop and a presbyter, 
was continued on a hundred battle-fields. But the Franks. 
were Catholics, and the Franks became supreme. The 
Arians were worsted in the conflict of swords as they 
had formerly been worsted in the conflict of words. The 
Empire of the West was restored by Charlemagne, who 
spread Christianity among the Saxons by the sword, 
and confirmed the spiritual supremacy of Rome. He 
died, and his dominions were partitioned amongst kings, 
who were royal only in the name. Europe was divided 
into castle-states. Savage isolation, irresponsible power: 
such was the order of the age. Yet still there was & 
sovereign whom all acknowledged, and whom all to a 
certain extent obeyed. That sovereign was the Pope 
of Rome. The men who wore his livery might travel 
throughout Europe in safety, welcome alike at cottage 
and castle, paying for their board and lodging with their 
prayers. If there is a Great Being who listens with plea- 


434 THE AGE OF THE ROSARY 


sure to the prayers of men, it must have been in the 
Dark Ages that he looked down upon the earth with 
most satisfaction. That period may be called The 
Age of the Rosary. From the Shetland Islands to the 
shores of China, prayers were being strung, and voices 
were being sonorously raised. The Christian repeated 
his paternosters and his credos on beads of holy clay from 
Palestine: the Persian at Teheran, the negro at Tim- 
buetoo, the Afghan at Cabul, repeated the ninety-nine 
names of God on beads made of camel bones from Mecca. 
The Indian prince by the waters of the Ganges muttered 
his devotions on a rosary of precious stones. The 
pious Buddhist in Ceylon, and in Ava, and in Pekin, 
had the beads ever between his fingers, and a prayer ever 
between his lips. By means of these great and cosmo- 
politan religions, all of which possessed their sacred 
books, all of which enjoined a pure morality, all of which 
united vast masses of men of different and even hostile 
nationalities beneath the same religious laws, beneath the 
same sceptre of an unseen king; all of which prescribed 
pilgrimage and travel as a pious work, the circulation of 
life in the human body was promoted; men congregated 
together at Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca and Benares. Their 
minds and morals were expanded. Religious enthusiasm 
united the scattered princes of Europe into one great 
army, and poured it on the East. The dukes and counts 
and barons were ruined; the castle system was extin- 
guished: and the castle serfs of necessity were free. The 
kings allied themselves with the free and fortified cities, 
who lent troops to the crown, but who officered those 
troops themselves; who paid taxes to the crown, but who 
voted those taxes in constitutional assemblies, and had 
the power to withold them if they pleased. Those towns 
now became not only abodes of industry and commerce, 
but of learning and the arts. In Italy the ancient 
culture had been revived. In Italy the towns of the 
western empire had never quite lost their municipal 


ELEMENTS OF THE RENAISSANCE 435 


prerogatives. New towns had also arisen, founded in 
despair and nurtured by calamity. These towns had 
opened a trade with Constantinople, a great commercial 
city in which the Arabs had a quarter and a mosque. 
The Italians were thus led forth into a trade with the 
Mahometans, which was interrupted for a time by the 
Crusades only to be afterwards resumed with redoubled 
vigour and success. For then new markets were opened 
for the spices of the East. Pepper became a requisite 
of European life; and pepper could be obtained from the 
Italians alone. The Indian trade was not monopolised 
by a single man, as it was in the lands of the Hast. 
It was distributed amongst an immense population. 
Wealth produced elegance, leisure, and refinement. 
There came into existence a large and active-minded 
class, craving for excitement, and desirous of new things. 
They hungered and thirsted after knowledge: they were 
not content with the sterile science of the priests. And 
when it was discovered that the world of the ancients 
lay buried in their soil, they were seized with a mania 
resembling that of treasure-seekers in the Hast, or of 
the gold-hunters in the new world. The elements of the 
Renaissance were preserved partly in Rome and the 
cities of the West, partly in Constantinople, and partly 
in the East. The Arabs, when they conquered Alex- 
andria, had adopted the physical science of the Greeks, 
and had added to it the algebra and arithmetic of India. 
Plato and Aristotle, Galen and Hippocrates, Ptolemy 
and Euclid, had been translated by the Eastern Chris- 
tians into Syriac, and thence into the Arabic. But the 
Arabs had not translated a single Greek historian or 
poet. These were to be found at Constantinople, where 
the Greck of the ancients was still spoken in its purity 
at the court and in the convent, though not by the people 
of the streets. The Greeks also had preserved the arts 
of their forefathers; though destitute of genius, they at 
least retained the art of laying on colours, of modelling 


436 THE FINE ARTS 


in clay, and of sculpturing in stone. The great towns of 
Italy, desirous to emulate the beauties of St Sophia, 
employed Greeks to build them Cathedrals, and to paint 
frescoes on their convent walls, and to make them statues 
for their streets. These Greek strangers established 
academies of art; and soon the masters were surpassed 
by their pupils. The Italians disdained to reproduce the 
figures of the Greek school, with their meagre hands, and 
sharp pointed feet, and staring eyes. Free institutions 
made their influence felt even in the arts; the empire of 
authority was shaken off. The fine arts spread beyond 
the Alps; they were first adopted and nurtured by the 
Church afterwards by the Town. Oil-painting was in- 
vented in the North. Masterpieces of the ancients were 
discovered in the South. Then the artists ceased to paint 
Madonnas, and children, and saints, and crucifixions. 
They were touched with the breath of antiquity; they 
widened their field; their hands were inspired by poetical 
ideas. It is a significant fact, that a Pope should himself 
conceive the project of pulling down the ancient Basilica 
of St Peter, every stone of which was consecrated by a 
memory, and of erecting in its stead a church on the 
model of a pagan temple. The Pope was also urged 
to set on foot a crusade; not to rescue the sepulchre 
from the hands of the infidels, but in the hope that the 
lost writings of the Greeks and Romans might be dis- 
covered in the East. For now had arrived the Book- 
hunting age. In the depth of the dark ages there had 
always been ecclesiastics, who drew the fire of their 
genius from the immortal works of the pagan writers. 
There were also monks who had a passion for trans- 
lating the writings of the Greeks into Latin; who went 
to Constantinople and returned with chests full of books, 
and who, if Greek manuscripts could not otherwise be 
procured, travelled into Arab Spain, settled at Cordova, 
and translated the Greeks from the Arabic version, to- 
gether with the works of Averroes and Avicenna. The 


THE BOOK HUNTERS 437 


Creeks, frequently visiting Italy, were invited to give 
lectures on their literature, and lessons in their language. 
The revival of Greek was commenced by Boccacio, who 
copied out Homer with his own hand; and a Greek 
academy was established at Florence. Petrarch revived 
the literature of Rome; he devoted his life to Cicero 
and Virgil; he wrote the epitaph of Laura on the margin 
of the Eneid; he died with his head pillowed on a book. 
The Roman law was also revived; as Greeks lectured 
on literature in Italy, so Italians lectured on law be- 
yond the Alps. And now began the search for the lost. 
Pilgrims of the antique wandered through Europe, ran- 
sacking convents for the treasures of the past. At this 
time whatever taste for learning had once existed among 
the monks appears to have died away. The pilgrims 
were directed to look in lofts, where rats burrowed under 
heaps of parchment; or to sift heaps of rubbish lying in 
the cellar. In such receptacles were found many of those 
works which are yet read by thousands with delight, 
and which are endeared to us all by the associations of 
our boyhood. It was thus that Quintilian was discov- 
ered, and, to use the language of the time, was delivered 
from his long imprisonment in the dungeons of the bar- 
barians. Lucretius was disinterred in Germany; a frag- 
ment of Petronius in Britain. Cosmo de’ Medici im- 
ported books in all languages from all parts of the world. 
A copyist became Pope, founded the Library of the 
Vatican, and ordered the translation of the Greek his- 
torians and philosophers into Latin. A great reading 
public now existed; the invention of printing, which a 
hundred years before would have been useless, spread 
like fire over Europe, and reduced, by four-fifths, the 
price of books. The writings of the classical geographers 
inspired Prince Henry and Columbus. The new World 
was discovered; the sea-route to India was found. Cairo 
and Baghdad, the great broker cities between India and 
Europe, were ruined. As the Indian Ocean, at first the 


438 THE REFORMATION 


centre of the world, had yielded to the Mediterranean, 
so now the basin of the Mediterranean was deserted, 
and the Atlantic became supreme. Italy decayed; Spain 
and Portugal succeeded to the throne. But those coun- 
tries were ruined by religious bigotry, and commercial 
monopolies. The trade of Portugal did not belong to the 
country, but to the court. The trade of Spain was also 
a monopoly shared’ between the crown and certain cities 
of Castile. The Dutch, the English, and the French, 
obtained free access to the tropical world, and bought 
the spices of the East with the silver of Peru. And then 
the great movement for Liberty commenced. All people 
of the Teutonic race; the Germans, the Swiss, the Dutch, 
the English, and the Scotch, the Danes and the Swedes 
cast off the yoke of the Italian supremacy, and some of 
the superstitions of the Italian creed. But now a new 
kind of servitude arose. The kings reduced the burghers 
of Europe to subjection. The constitutional monarchies 
of the middle ages disappeared. In England alone, 
owing to its insular position, a standing army was not re- 
quired for the protection of the land. In England, there- 
fore, the encroachments of the Crown were resisted with 
success. ‘Two Revolutions established the sovereignty 
of an elected parliament, and saved England from the 
fate of France. For in that land tyranny had struck its 
roots far down into the soil, and could not be torn up 
without the whole land being rent in twain. In Spain, 
despotism might rule in safety over ignorance; but the 
French had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, and they 
demanded to eat of the Tree of Life. A bread riot be- 
came a rebellion; the rebellion became a revolution. 
Maddened by resistance, frenzied with fear, they made 
their revolution a massacre. Yet, in spite of mummeries 
and murders, and irreligious persecutions; in spite of 
follies perpetrated in the name of Reason, and cruelties 
committed in the name of Humanity, that revolution 
regenerated France, and planted principles which spread 


SUMMARY 439 


over the continent of Europe, and which are now bear- 
ing fruit in Italy and Spain. With the nineteenth cen- 
tury, a new era of histary begins. 

Such then is the plain unvarnished story of the human 
race. We have traced the stream of history to its source 
in the dark forest; we have followed it downwards 
through the steppes of the shepherds, and the valleys 
of the great priest peoples; we have swept swiftly along, 
past pyramids and pagodas, and the brick-piles of Baby- 
lon; past the temples of Ionia, and the amphitheatres of 
Rome; past castles and cathedrals lying opposite to 
mosques with graceful minaret and swelling dome; and 
so, onwards and onwards, till towns rise on both sides of 
the stream; towns sternly walled with sentinels before 
the gates; so, onwards and onwards, till the stream 
widens and is covered with ships large as palaces, and 
towering with sail; till the banks are lined with gardens, 
and villas; and huge cities, no longer walled, hum with 
industry, and becloud the air; and deserts or barren hills 
are no longer to be seen; and the banks recede and open 
out like arms, and the earth-shores dissolve, and we 
faintly discern the glassy glimmering of the boundless 
sea. We shall descend to the mouth of the river, we shall 
explore the unknown waters which lie beyond the Pres- 
ent, we shall survey the course which man has yet to run. 
But before we attempt to navigate the Future, let us re- 
turn for a moment to the Past; let us endeavour to ascer- 
tain the laws which direct the movements of the stream, 
and let us visit the ruins which are scattered on its banks. 

The progress of the human race is caused by the 
mental efforts which are made at first from necessity 
to preserve life, and secondly from the desire to obtain 
distinction. Ina healthy nation, each class presses into 
the class which lies above it; the blood flows upwards, 
and so the whole mass, by the united movements of its 
single atoms, rises in the scale. The progress of a nation 
is the sum total of the progress of the individuals com- 


440 THE GREEK FLAW 


posing it. If certain parts of the body politic are stifled 
in their growth by means of artificial laws, it is evident 
that the growth of the whole will be arrested; for the 
growth of each part is dependent on the growth of all. 
It is usual to speak of Greece as a free country; and so 
it was in comparison with Asia. But more than half its 
inhabitants were slaves; labour was degraded; whatever 
could be done by the thought alone, and by delicate 
movements of the hands was carried to perfection; but 
in physical science the Greeks did little, because little 
could be done without instruments, and instruments 
can seldom be invented except by free and intelligent 
artisans. So the upper part of the Greek body grew; the 
lower part remained in a base and brutal state, discharg- 
ing the offices of life, but without beauty and without 
strength. The face was that of Hyperion; the legs were 
shrivelled and hideous as those of a satyr. In Asia hu- 
man laws have been still more fatal to the human prog- 
ress. In China there is no slavery, and there is no caste; 
the poorest man may be exalted to the highest station; 
not birth but ability is the criterion of distinction; ap- 
pointments are open to the nation, and are awarded 
by means of competitive examinations. But the Chinese 
are schoolboys who never grow up; generals and states- 
men who incur the displeasure of the crown are horsed 
and flagellated in the Eton style, a bamboo being used 
instead of a birch. ~ The patriarchal system of the 
steppes has been transferred to the imperial plain. Just 
as a Chinese town is merely a Tartar camp encircled 
by earthen walls; just as a Chinese house is merely a 
Tartar tent, supported by wooden posts and cased with 
brick, so it is with the government, domestic and official, 
of that country. Every one is the slave of his father, as 
it was in the old tent-life; every father is the slave of an 
official who stands in the place of the old clan chief; 
and all are slaves of the Emperor, who is the viceroy of 
God. In China, therefore, senility is supreme; nothing 


THE ASIATIC FLAW 441 


is respectable unless it has existed at least a thousand 
years; foreigners are barbarians, and property is wmse- 
cure. In this one phrase the whole history of Asia is 
contained. In the despotic lands of the east, the peasant 
who grows more corn than he requires is at once an 
object of attention to the police; he is reported to the 
governor, and a charge is laid against him, in order 
that his grain may be seized. He not only loses the fruit 
of his toil, but he also receives the bastinado. In the 
same manner if a merchant, by means of his enterprise, 
industry, and talents amasses a large fortune, he also 1s 
arrested and is put to death, that his estate may escheat 
to the crown. As the Chinese say, “The elephant is 
killed for his ivory.” This, then, is the secret of Asiatic 
apathy, and not the heat of the climate, or the inherent 
qualities of race. Civilised Asia has been always en- 
thralled, because standing armies have always been re- 
quired to resist the attacks of those warlike barbarians 
who cover the deserts of Arabia and Tartary, the high- 
lands of Ethiopia and Cabul. Asia, therefore, soon takes 
a secondary place, and Europe becomes the centre of 
the human growth. Yet it should not be forgotten that 
Asia was civilised when Europe was a forest and @ 
swamp. Asia taught Europe its A. B. C.; Asia taught 
Europe to cipher and to draw; Asia taught Europe the 
language of the skies, how to calculate eclipses, how to 
follow the courses of the stars, how to measure time by 
means of an instrument, which recorded with its shadow 
the station of the sun; how to solve mathematical prob- 
lems; how to philosophise with abstract ideas, Let us 
not forget the school in which we learnt to spell, and 
those venerable halls in which we acquired the rudiments 
of science and of art. The savage worships the shades of 
his ancestors chiefly from selfish fear; the Asiatic follows, 
from blind prejudice, the wisdom of the ancients, and 
rejects with contempt all knowledge which was unknown 
to them. Yet within these superstitions a beautiful 


442 THE RUINS OF EGYPT 


sentiment lies concealed. We ought, indeed, to reverence 
the men of the past, who, by their labours and their 
inventions, have made us what we are. This great and 
glorious city in which we dwell, this mighty London, 
the metropolis of the earth; these streets flowing with 
eager-minded life, and gleaming with prodigious wealth; 
these forests of masts, these dark buildings, turning 
refuse into gold, And giving bread to many thousand 
mouths; these harnessed elements which whirl us along 
beneath the ground, and which soon will convey us 
through the air; these spacious halls, adorned with all 
that can exalt the imagination or fascinate the sense; 
these temples of melody; these galleries, exhibiting exca- 
vated worlds; these walls covered with books in which 
dwell the souls of the immortal dead, which, when they 
are opened, transport us by a magic spell to lands which 
are vanished and passed away, or to spheres created 
by the poet’s art; which make us walk with Plato be- 
neath the plane trees, or descend with Dante into the 
dolorous abyss;—to whom do we owe all these? First, 
to the poor savages, forgotten and despised, who, by 
rubbing sticks together, discovered fire, who first tamed 
the timid fawn, and first made the experiment of putting 
seeds into the ground. And, secondly, we owe them to 
those enterprising warriors who established Nationality, 
and to those priests who devoted their life-time to the 
culture of their minds. There is a land where the air 
is always tranquil, where nature wears always the same 
bright yet lifeless smile; and there, as in a vast museum, 
are preserved the colossal achievements of the past. 
Let us enter the sad and silent river; let us wander on its 
dusky shores. Buried cities are beneath our feet; the 
ground on which we tread is the pavement of a tomb. 
See the Pyramids towering to the sky, with men, like 
insects, crawling round their base; and the Sphinx, 
couched in vast repose, with a ruined temple between 
its paws. Since those great monuments were raised, the 


THE DEAD GODS 443 


very heavens have been changed. When the architects 
of Egypt began their work, there was another polar star 
in the northern sky, and the Southern Cross shone upon 
the Baltic shores. How glorious are the memories of 
those ancient men, whose names are forgotten, for they » 
lived and laboured in the distant and unwritten past. 
Too great to be known, they sit on the height of cen- 
turies and look down on fame. The boat expands its 
white and pointed wings; the sailors chaunt a plaintive 
song; the waters bubble around us as we glide past the 
tombs and temples of the by-gone days. The men are 
dead, and the gods are dead. Nought but their mem- 
ories remain. Where now is Osiris, who came down upon 
earth out of love for men, who was killed by the malice 
of the Evil One, who rose again from the grave, and be- 
came the Judge of the dead? Where now is Isis the 
mother, with the child Horus on her lap? They are dead; 
they are gone to the land of the shades. To-morrow, 
Jehovah, you and your son shall be with them. 

Men die, and the ideas which they call gods die too; 
yet death is not destruction, but only a kind of change. 
Those strange ethereal secretions of the brain, those 
wondrously distilled thoughts of ours—do they ever 
really die? they are embodied into words; and from 
these words, spoken or written, new thoughts are born 
within the brains of those who listen or who read. 
There was a town named Heliopolis; it had a college 
garden, and a willow hanging over the Fountain of the 
Sun; and there the Professors lectured and discoursed 
on the Triune God, and the creation of the world, and 
the Serpent Evil, and the Tree of Life; and on chaos 
and darkness, and the shining star; and there the stone 
quadrant was pointed to the heavens; and there the 
laboratory furnace glowed. And in that college two 
foreign students were received, and went forth learned 
in its lore. The first created a nation in the Egyptian 
style; the second created a system of ideas; and, strange 


444 A DAY AT ATHENS 


to say, on Egyptian soil the two were reunited: the 
philosophy of Moses . was joined in Alexandria to the 
philosophy of Plato, not only by the Jews, but also by 
the Christians; not only in Philo Judzus, but also in 
the Gospel of St John. 

Over the bright blue waters, under the soft and tender 
sky, with the purple sails outspread and roses twining 
round the mast, with lute and flute resounding from the 
prow, and red wine poured upon the sea, and thanks- 
giving to the gods, we enter the Pirzus, and salute with 
our flag the temple on the hill. Vessels Sweep past us, 
outward bound, laden with statues and paintings, for 
such are the manufactures of Athens, where the mile- 
stones are masterpieces, and the street-walkers poets 
and philosophers. Imagine the transports of the young 
provincial who went to Athens to commence a career 
of ambition, to make himself a name. What raptures 
he must have felt as he passed through that City of 
the Violet Crown with Homer in his bosom, and hopes 
of another United Greece within his heart. What a 
banquet of delights, what varied treasures of the mind 
were spread before him there. He listened first to a 
speech of Pericles on political affairs, and then to a 
lecture by Anaxagoras. He was taken to the studio of 
Phidias and of Polygnotus: he went to a theatre built 
of Persian masts to see a new tragedy by Sophocles or 
Euripides, and finished the evening at Aspasia’s 
establishment, with odes of Sappho, and ballads of 
Anacreon, and sweet-eyed musicians, and intellectual 
heteree. So great are the achievements of the Greeks, so 
deep is the debt which we owe to them, that criticism 
appears ungrateful or obtuse. It is scarely possible to 
indicate the vices and defects of this people without 
seeming guilty of insensibility or affectation. It is 
curious to observe how grave and sober minds accus- 
tomed to gather evidence with care, and to utter de- 
cisions with impartiality, cease to be judicial when 


THE GREEK SPIRIT 445 


Greece is brought before them. She unveils her beauty, 
and they can only admire: they are unable to condemn. 
Those who devote themselves to the study of the Greeks 
become nationalised in their literature, and patriots of 
their domain. It is indeed impossible to read their 
works without being impressed by their purity, their 
calmness, their exquisite symmetry and finish resem- 
bling that which is bestowed upon a painting or a statue. 
But it is not only in the Greek writings that the Greek 
spirit is contained: it has entered the modern European 
mind; it permeates the world of thought; it inspires the 
ideas of those who have never read the Greek authors, 
and who perhaps regard them with disdain. We do not 
see the foundations of our minds: they are buried in the 
past. The great books and the great discoveries of 
modern times are based upon the works of Homer, Plato, 
Aristotle and their disciples. All that we owe to Rome 
we owe to Greece as well, for Italy was a child of Greece. 
The cities on the southern coast bestowed on the rude 
natives the elements of culture, and when Rome be- 
came famous it was colonised by Grecian philosophers 
and artists. To Rome we are indebted for those laws 
from which our jurisprudence is descended, and to 
Rome we are indebted for something else besides. We 
shall not now pause on the Rome of the Republic, when 
every citizen was a soldier, and worked in the fields 
with his own hands; when every temple was the monu- 
ment of a victory, and every statue the memorial of a 
hero; door posts were adorned with the trophies of 
war, and halls with the waxen images of ancestors; 
when the Romans were simple, religious, and severe, 
and the vices of luxury were yet unknown, and banquets 
were plain and sociable repasts, where the guests in turn 
sang old ballads while the piper played. Nor shall we 
pause on the Rome of Augustus, when East and West 
were united in peace and with equal rights before the 
law; when the tyranny of petty princedoms, and the 


446 CHRISTIAN ROME 


chicanery of Grecian courts of law, and the blood-feuds 
of families had been destroyed; and the empire was 
calm and not yet becalmed, and rested a moment be- 
tween tumult and decay. We shall pass on to a Rome 
more great and more sublime; a Rome which ruled 
Europe, but not by arms ; &@ Rome which had no 
mercenary legions, no Pretorian guards, and which yet 
received the tribute of kings, and whose Legates ex- 
ercised the power of proconsuls, In this Rome a man 
clad in the purple of the Cesars and crowned with the 
tiara of the Pontifex sent forth his soldiers armed with 
the crucifix, and they brought nations captive to his 
feet. Rome became a City of God: she put on a 
spiritual crown. She cried to the kings, Give, and gold 
was poured into her exchequers; she condemned a man 
who had defied her, and he had no longer a place among 
mankind; she proclaimed a Truce of God, and the swords 
of robber knights were sheathed; she preached a crusade, 
and Europe was hurled into Asia. She lowered the 
pride of the haughty, and she exalted the heart of the 
poor; she softened the rage of the mighty, she con- 
soled the despair of the oppressed. She fed the hungry, 
and she clothed the naked; she took children to her 
arms and signed them with the Cross; she administered 
the sacraments to dying lips, and laid the cold body in 
the peaceful grave. Her first word was to welcome, 
and her last word to forgive. In the Dark Ages the 
European States were almost entirely severed from one 
another; it was the Roman Church alone which gave them 
one sentiment in common, and which united them within 
her fold. In those days of violence and confusion, 
in those days of desolation and despair, when a stranger 
was a thing which, like a leper or a madman, any one 
might kill, when every gentleman was a highway robber, 
when the only kind of lawsuit was a duel, hundreds of 
men dressed in gowns of coarse dark stuff, with cords 
round their waists and bare feet, travelled with im- 


THE NIGHT 447 


punity from castle to castle, preaching a doctrine of 
peace and good will, holding up an emblem of humility 
and sorrow, receiving confessions, pronouncing penance 
or absolutions, soothing the agonies of a wounded con- 
science, awakening terror in the hardened mind. Parish 
churches were built: the baron and his vassals chanted 
together the Kyrie Eleison, and bowed their heads 
together when the bell sounded and the Host was raised. 
Here and there in the sombre forest a band of those 
holy men encamped, and cut down the trees and erected 
a building which was not only a house of prayer, but 
also a kind of model farm. The monks worked in the 
fields, and had their carpenters’ and their blacksmiths’ 
shops. They copied out books in a fair hand: they 
painted Madonnas for their chapel: they composed 
music for their choir: they illuminated missals: they 
studied Arabic and Greek: they read Cicero and Virgil: 
they preserved the Roman Law. Bright, indeed, yet 
scanty are these gleams. In the long night of the Dark 
Ages we look upon the earth, and only the convent and 
the castle appear to be alive. In the convent the sound 
of honourable labour mingles with the sound of prayer 
and praise. In the castle sits the baron with his children 
on his lap, and his wife leaning on his shoulder: the 
troubadour sings, and the page and demoiselle exchange 
a glance of love. The castle is the home of music and 
chivalry and family affection. The convent is the home 
of religion and of art. But the people cower in their 
wooden huts, half starved, half frozen, and wolves sniff 
at them through the chinks in the walls. The convent 
prays, and the castle sings: the cottage hungers, and 
groans, and dies. Such is the dark night: here and there 
a star in the heaven: here and there a torch upon the 
earth: all else is cloud and bitter wind. But now, 
behold the light glowing in the east: it brightens, it 
broadens, the day is at hand. The sun is rising, and 
will set no more: the castle and the convent disappear: 


448 THE DAWN 


the world is illumined: freedom is restored. Italy is 
a garden, and its blue sea shines with sails. New worlds 
are discovered, new arts are invented: the merchants 
enrich Europe, and their sons set her free. In a hall 
at Westminster, in a redoubt at Bunker Hill, in a Tennis 
Court at Versailles, great victories are won, and liberty 
at last descends even to the poor French peasant grow- 
ing grey in his furrow, even to the negro picking cotton 
in the fields. Yet after all, how little has been done! 
The sun shines as yet only on a corner of the earth: 
Asia and Africa are buried in the night. And even here 
in this island, where liberty was born, where wealth 
is sustained by enterprise and industry, and war comes 
seldom, and charity abounds, there are yet dark places 
where the sunlight never enters, and where hope has 
never been: where day follows ee In never changing 
toil, and where life leads only to the prison, or the work- 
house, or the grave. Yet a day will come when the 
whole earth will be as civilised as Europe: a day will 
come when these dark spots will pass away. 

If we compare the present with the past, if we trace 
events at all epochs to their causes, if we examine the 
elements of human growth, we find that Nature has 
raised us to what we are, not by fixed laws, but by pro- 
visional expedients, and tha the principle ih in one 
age effected the advancement of a nation, in the next 
age retarded the mental movement, or even destroyed 
it altogether. War, despotism, slawerr, and superstition, 
are now injurious fe the progress of Europe, but they 
were once the agents by which progress was produced. 
By means of War the animated life was slowly raised 
upward in the scale, and quadrupeds passed into man. 
By means of War bik human intelligence was brightened, 
and the affections were made intense; weapons and tools 
were invented; foreign wives were captured, and the 
marriages of blood relations were forbidden; prisoners 
were tamed, and the women set free; prisoners were ex- 


THE EXPEDIENT OF WAR 449 


changed, accompanied with presents; thus commerce 
was established, and thus, by means of War, men were 
first brought into amicable relations with one another. 
By War the tribes were dispersed all over the world, and 
adopted various pursuits according to the conditions by 
which they were surrounded. By War the tribes were 
compressed into the nation. It was War which founded 
the Chinese Empire. It was War which had locked 
Babylonia, and Egypt, and India. It was War which 
developed the genius of Greece. It was War which 
planted the Greek language in Asia, and so rendered 
possible the spread of Christianity. It was War which 
united the world in peace from the Cheviot Hills to the 
Danube and the Euphrates. It was War which saved 
Europe from the quietude of China. It was War which 
made Mecca the centre of the East. It was War which 
united the barons in the crusades, and which destroyed 
the feudal system. Even in recent times the action of 
War has been useful in condensing scattered elements 
of nationality, and in liberating subject populations. 
United Italy was formed directly or indirectly by the 
wars of ’59, 66, and ’70. The last war realised the 
dreams of German poets, and united the Teutonic nations 
more closely than the shrewdest statesmen could have 
conceived to be possible a few years ago. That same 
war, so calamitous for France, will yet regenerate that 
great country, and make her more prosperous than she 
has ever been. The American War emancipated four 
million men, and decided for ever the question as to 
whether the Union was a nationality or a league. But 
the Crimean War was injurious to civilisation; it re- 
tarded a useful and inevitable event. Turkey will some 
day be covered with corn-fields; Constantinople will 
some day be a manufacturing town; but a generation has 
been lost. Statesmen and journalists will learn in time, 
that whatever is conquered for civilisation is conquered 
for all. To preserve the Balance of Power was an ex- 


450 WAR IN THE FUTURE 


cellent policy in the middle ages, when war was the only 
pursuit of a gentleman, and when conquest was the only 
ambition of kings. It is now suited only for the High- 
lands of Abyssinia. The jealousy with which true 
Britons regard the Russian success in Central Asia is 
surely a very miserable feeling. That a vast region 
of the earth should be opened, that robbery and rapine 
and slave-making raids should be suppressed, that waste- 
lands should be cultivated, that new stores of wealth 
should be discovered, that new markets should be estab- 
blished for the products of European industry, our own 
among the rest, that Russia should adjoin England in 
Asia as she adjoins Germany in Europe, what a lament- 
able occurrence, what an ominous event! In Central 
Africa it often happens, that between two barbarous and 
distrustful nations there is a wide neutral ground, in- 
habited by wild beasts, which prey upon the flocks and 
herds on either side. Such is the policy which main- 
tains the existence of barbarous kingdoms between two 
civilised frontiers. The great Turkish and Chinese Em- 
pires, the Lands of Morocco, Abyssinia, and Thibet, will 
be eventually filled with free, industrious, and educated 
populations. But those people will never begin to 
advance until their property is rendered secure, until 
they enjoy the rights of man; and these they will never 
obtain except by means of European conquest. In 
British India the peasant reaps the rice which he has 
sown; and the merchant has no need to hide his gold 
beneath the ground. The young men of the new genera- 
tion are looking forward to the time when the civil ap- 
pointments of their country will be held by them. The 
Indian Mutiny was a mutiny only, and not a rebellion; 
the industrious and mercantile classes were on the 
English side. There is a sickly school of politicians 
who declare that all countries belong to their inhabi- 
tants, and that to take them is a crime. If any country 
in Asia did belong to its inhabitants, there might be 


THE EXPEDIENT OF RELIGION 451 


some force in this objection. But Asia is possessed by a 
few kings and by their soldiers; these rulers are usually 
foreigners; the masses of the people are invariably slaves. 
The conquest of Asia by European powers is therefore 
in reality Emancipation, and is the first step towards 
the establishment of oriental nationality. It is need- 
less to say that Europe will never engage in crusades 
to liberate servile populations; but the pride and 
ignorance of military despots will provoke foreign wars, 
which will prove fatal to their rule. Thus War will, 
for long years yet to come, be required to prepare the 
way for freedom and progress in the East; and in 
Europe itself, it is not probable that War will ever ab- 
solutely cease until science discovers some destroying 
force, so simple in its administration, so horrible in its 
effects, that all art, all gallantry, will be at an end, and, 
battle will be massacres which the feelings of man- 
kind will be unable to endure. 

A second expedient of Nature is Religion. Men be- 
lieve in the existence of beings who can punish and re- 
ward them in this life or in the next, who are the true 
rulers of the world, and who have deputed certain men, 
called priests, to collect tribute and to pass laws, on their 
behalf. By means of these erroneous ideas, a system 
of government is formed to which kings themselves are 
subjected; the moral nature of man is improved, the 
sciences and arts are developed, distinct and hostile 
races are united. But Error, like War, is only pro- 
visional. In Europe, Religion no longer exists as a 
political power, but it will probably yet render service 
to civilisation in assisting to Europeanize the barbarous 
nations whom events will in time bring under our control. 

A third expedient of nature is The inequality of con- 
ditions. Sloth is the natural state of man; prolonged 
and monotonous labour is hard for him to bear. The 
savage can follow a trail through the forest, or can lie 
in ambush for days at a time; this pertinacity and 


452 THE EXPEDIENT OF UNEQUALITY 


patience are native to his mind; they belong to the an- 
imals from whom he is descended: but the cultivation 
of the soil is a new kind of labour, and it is only fol- 
lowed from compulsion. It is probable that when 
domestic slavery was invented, a great service was 
rendered to mankind, and it has already been shown 
that when prisoners of war were tamed and broken in, 
woman were set free, and became beautiful, long haired, 
low-voiced, sweet-eyed creatures, delicate in form, 
modest in demeanour, and refined in soul. It was also by 
means of Slavery that a system of superfluous labour 
was established; for woman, when slaves, are made only 
to labour for the essentials of life. It was by means of 
Slavery that leisure was created, that the priests were 
enabled to make experiments, and to cultivate the arts, 
that the great public buildings of the ancient lands were 
raised. It was Slavery which arrested the progress of 
Greece; but it was also Slavery which enabled all the free 
men of a Greek town to be sculptors, poets, and philos- 
ophers. Slavery is now happily extinct, and can never 
be revived under the sanction of civilised authority. But 
a European Government ought perhaps to introduce 
compulsory labour among the barbarous races that 
acknowledge its sovereignty and occupy its land. Chil- 
dren are ruled and schooled by force, and it is not an 
empty metaphor to say that savages are children. If 
they were made to work, not for the benefit of others, but 
for their own, if the rewards of their labour were be- 
stowed, not on their masters, but on themselves, the habit 
of work would become with them a second nature, as it is 
with us, and they would learn to require luxuries which 
industry only could obtain. A-man is not a slave in be- 
ing compelled to work against his will, but in being com- 
pelled to work without hope and without reward. En- 
forced labour is undoubtedly a hardship, but it is one 
which at present belongs to the lot of man, and is indis- 
pensable to progress. Mankind grows because men 


THE EXPEDIENT OF MONEY-LOVE 453 


desire to better themselves in life, and this desire pro- 
ceeds from the Inequality of Conditions. A time will 
undoubtedly arrive when all men and women will be 
equal, and when the love of money, which is now the 
root of all industry, and which therefore is now the 
root of all good, will cease to animate the human mind. 
But changes so prodigious can only be effected in pro- 
digious periods of time. Human nature cannot be 
transformed by a coup d’état, as the Comtists and 
Communists imagine. It is a complete delusion to sup- 
pose that wealth can be equalised and happiness im- 
partially distributed by any process of law, act of 
Parliament, or revolutionary measure. It is easy to 
compose a pathetic scene in a novel, or a loud article 
in a magazine by contrasting Dives lunching on turtle 
at Birch’s with Lazarus feeding on garbage in a cellar. 
But the poor man loses nothing because another man 
is rich. The Communist might as well denounce one 
man for enjoying excellent health, while another man is 
a victim to consumption. Wealth, like health, is in the 
air; if a man makes a fortune he draws money from 
Nature and gives it to the general stock. Every mil- 
lionaire enriches the community. It is undoubtedly the 
duty of the government to mitigate, so far as lies within 
its power, the miseries which result from  over- 
nopulation. But as long as men continue unequal in 
patience, industry, talent, and sobriety, so long there 
will be rich men and poor men—men who roll in their 
carriages, and men who die in the streets. If all the 
property of this country were divided, things would soon 
return to their actual condition, unless some scheme 
could also be devised for changing human nature; and 
as for the system of the Commune, which makes it 
impossible for a man to rise or to fall, it is merely the 
old caste system revived; if it could be put into force, 
all industry would be disheartened, emulation would 
cease, mankind would go to sleep. It is not, however, 


454 FALLACIES OF THE COMMUNE 


strange that superficial writers should suppose that the 
evils of social life can be altered by changes in govern- 
ment and law. In the lands of the East, in the Spain 
and Portugal of the sixteenth century, in the France of 
the eighteenth century, in the American Colonies, and 
in England itself, whole classes were at one time plunged 
by misgovernment into suffering of body and apathy 
of mind. But a government can confer few benefits 
upon a people except by destroying its own laws. The 
great reforms which followed the publication of the 
“Wealth of Nations,” may all be summed up in the 
word Repeal. Commerce was regulated in former times 
by a number of paternal laws, which have since been 
happily withdrawn. The government still pays with our 
money a number of gentlemen to give us information 
respecting a future state, and still requires that in cer- 
tain business transactions a document shall be drawn 
up with mysterious rites in a medieval jargon; but, 
placing aside hereditary evils which, on account of 
vested interests, it is impossible at once to remove, it 
may fairly be asserted that the government of this 
country is as nearly perfect as any government can be. 
Power rests upon public opinion, and is so beautifully 
poised that it can be overthrown and replaced without 
the business of the state being interrupted for a day. 
If the Executive is condemned by the nation, the press 
acts with irresistible force upon the Commons; a vote 
of censure is passed and the rulers of a great empire 
abdicate their thrones. The House of Lords is also an 
admirable Upper Chamber; for if it were filled with 
ambitious men elected by the people it would enter 
into conflict with the Commons. And as for the Royal 
Image it costs little and is useful as an emblem. The 
government of England possesses at the same time the 
freedom which is only found in a republic, and the 
loyalty which is only felt towards a monarch. Some 
writers believe that this monarchy is injurious to the 


THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND 455 


public and argue as follows: There are no paupers in 
America, and America is a republic. There are many 
paupers in England, and England is a monarchy. 
Therefore England should imitate America. It may 
astonish these writers to learn that America is in reality 
more of a monarchy than England. Buckingham Palace 
is a private dwelling; but the White House, though it 
has none of the pomp, has all the power of a Court. 
The king of America has more to give away than any 
king of Great Britain since the time of Charles the 
second. He has the power to discharge of his own good 
pleasure and mere motion, every ambassador, every 
consul, every head of department, every government 
employé, down to the clerk on two hundred dollars a 
year, and to fill their places with his own friends. In 
America the opinion of the public can with difficulty 
act upon the government. The press has no dignity, 
and very little power. Practices occur in the House of 
Representatives which have been unknown in England 
since the days of Walpole. If the prosperity of a coun- 
try depended on its government, America would be less 
prosperous than England. But in point of fact America 
is the happiest country in the world. There is not a 
man in the vast land which lies between the oceans, 
who, however humble his occupation may be, does not 
hope to make a fortune before he dies. The whole 
nation is possessed with the spirit which may be ob- 
served in Fleet Street and Cheapside; the boys sharp- 
eyed and curious, the men hastening eagerly along, even 
the women walking as if they had an object in view. 
There are in America no dull-eyed heavy-footed la- 
bourers, who slouch to and fro from their cottage to 
their work, from their work to the beer-house, without 
a higher hope in life than a sixpence from the squire 
when they open a gate. There are no girls of the 
milliner class who prefer being the mistresses of gentle- 
men to marrying men of their own station with a 


456 AMERICAN PROSPERITY 


Cockney accent and red hands. The upper classes in 
America have not that exquisite refinement which exists 
in the highest circles of society in Europe. But if we 
take the whole people through and through, we find 
them the most civilised nation on the earth. They pre- 
serve in a degree hitherto without example the dignity of 
human nature unimpaired. Their nobleness of character 
results from prosperity; and their prosperity is due to 
the nature of their land. Those who are unable to earn 
a living in the east, have only to move towards the 
west. This then is the reason that the English race in 
America is more happy, more enlightened, and more 
thriving, than it is in the mother-land. Politically 
speaking, the emigrant gains nothing; he is as free in 
England as he is in America; but he leaves a land 
where labour is depreciated, and goes to a land where 
labour is in demand. That England may become as 
prosperous as America, it must be placed under Ameri- 
can conditions; that is to say, food must be cheap, 
labour must be dear, emigration must be easy. It is not 
by universal suffrage, it is not by any act of parlia- 
ment that these conditions can be created. It is Science 
alone which can Americanize England; it is Science 
alone which can ameliorate the condition of the human 
race. 

When Man first wandered in the dark forest, he was 
Nature’s serf; he offered tribute and prayer to the winds, 
and the lightning, and the rain, to the cave-lion, which 
seized his burrow for its lair; to the mammoth, which 
devoured his scanty crops. But as time passed on, he 
ventured to rebel; he made stone his servant; he dis- 
covered fire and vegetable poison; he domesticated iron; 
he slew the wild beasts or subdued them; he made them 
feed him, and give him clothes. He became a chief 
surrounded by his slaves; the fire lay beside him with 
dull red eye and yellow tongue waiting his instructions 
to prepare his dinner, or to make him poison, or to go 


THE CONQUEST OF MAN 457 


with him to the war, and fly on the houses of the enemy, 
hissing, roaring, and consuming all. The trees of the 
forest were his flock, he slaughtered them at his con- 
venience; the earth brought forth at his command. He 
struck iron upon wood or stone and hewed out the 
fancies of his brain; he plucked shells, and flowers, and 
the bright red berries, and twined them in his hair; he 
cut the pebble to a sparkling gem, he made the dull 
clay a transparent stone. The river which once he 
had worshipped as a god, or which he had vainly at- 
tacked with sword and spear, he now conquered to his 
will. He made the winds grind his corn and carry 
him across the waters; he made the stars serve him as 
a guide. He obtained from salt and wood and sulphur 
a destroying force. He drew from fire, and water, the 
awful power which produces the voleano, and made it 
do the work of human hands. He made the sun paint 
his portraits, and gave the lightning a situation in the 
post-office. 

Thus Man has taken into his service, and modified 
to his use, the animals, the plants, the earths and the 
stones, the waters and the winds, and the more com- 
plex forces of heat, electricity, sunlight, magnetism, with 
chemical powers of many kinds. By means of his in- 
ventions and discoveries, by means of the arts and 
trades, and by means of the industry resulting from 
them, he has raised himself from the condition of a 
serf to the condition of a lord. His triumph, indeed, 
is Incomplete; his kingdom is not yet come. The Prince 
of Darkness is still triumphant in many regions of the 
world; epidemics still rage, death is yet victorious. But 
the God of light, the Spirit of Knowledge, the Divine 
Intellect is gradually spreading over the planet and up- 
wards to the skies. The beautiful legend will yet come 
true; Ormuzd will vanquish Ahriman; Satan will be 
overcome; Virtue will descend from heaven, surrounded 
by her angels, and reign over the hearts of men. Earth, 


458 INVENTIONS OF THE FUTURE 


which is now a purgatory, will be made a paradise, not 
by idle prayers and supplications, but by the efforts of 
man himself, and by means of mental achievements 
analogous to those which have raised him to his present 
state. Those inventions and discoveries which have 
made him, by the grace of God, king of the animals, 
lord of the elements, and sovereign of steam and elec- 
tricity, were all of them founded on experiment and ob- 
servation. We can conquer nature only by obeying her 
laws, and in order to obey her laws we must first learn 
what they are. When we have ascertained, by means 
of Science, the method of nature’s operations, we shall 
be able to take her place and to perform them for our- 
selves. When we understand the laws which regulate 
the complex phenomena of life, we shall be able to 
predict the future as we are already able to predict 
comets and eclipses and the planetary movements. 
Three inventions which perhaps may be long delayed, 
but which possibly are near at hand, will give to this 
overcrowded island the prosperous conditions of the 
United States. The first is the discovery of a motive 
force which will take the place of steam, with its cum- 
brous fuel of oil or coal; secondly, the invention of 
aerial locomotion which will transport labour at a 
trifling cost of money and of time to any part of the 
planet, and which, by annihilating distance, will speedily 
extinguish national distinctions; and thirdly, the manu- 
facture of flesh and flour from the elements by a chemi- 
eal process in the laboratory, similar to that which is 
now performed within the bodies of the animals and 
plants. Food will then be manufactured in unlimited 
quantities at a trifling expense; and our enlightened 
posterity will look back on us who eat oxen and sheep | 
just as we look back upon cannibals. Hunger and 
starvation will then be unknown, and the best part of 
the human life will no longer be wasted in the tedious 
process of cultivating the fields. Population will might- 


THE REIGN OF LOVE 459 


ity increase, and the earth will be a garden. Govern- 
ments will be conducted with the quietude and regu- 
larity of club committees. The interest which is now 
felt in politics will be transferred to science; the latest 
news from the laboratory of the chemist, or the ob- 
servatory of the astronomer, or the experimenting room 
of the biologist will be eagerly discussed. Poetry and 
the fine arts will take that place in the heart which reli- 
gion now holds. Luxuries will be cheapened and made 
common to all; none will be rich, and none poor. Not 
only will Man subdue the forces of evil that are with- 
out; he will also subdue those that are within. He 
will repress the base instincts and propensities which 
he has inherited from the animals below; he will obey 
the laws that are written on his heart; he will worship 
the divinity within him. As our conscience forbids us 
to commit actions which the conscience of the savage 
allows, so the moral sense of our successors will stig- 
matise as crimes those offences against the intellect 
which are sanctioned by ourselves. Idleness and 
stupidity will be regarded with abhorrence. Women 
will become the companions of men, and the tutors 
of their children. The whole world will be united by 
the same sentiment which united the primeval clan, 
and which made its members think, feel, and act as 
one. Men will look upon this star as their father- 
land; its progress will be their ambition; the gratitude 
of others their reward. ‘Those bodies which now we 
wear, belong to the lower animals; our minds have 
already outgrown them! already we look upon them 
with contempt. A time will come when Science will 
transform them by means which we cannot conjecture, 
and which, even if explained to us, we could not now 
understand, just as the savage cannot understand elec- 
tricity, magnetism, steam. Disease will be extirpated; 
the causes of decay will be removed; immortality will 
be invented. And then, the earth being small, man- 


460 INVENTION OF IMMORTALITY 


kind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless 
Saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun 
from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which 
will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the 
universe. Finally, men will master the forces of 
nature; they will become themselves architects of 
systems, manufacturers of worlds. Man will then be 
perfect; he will then be a creator; he will therefore 
be what the vulgar worship as a god. But even then, 
he will in reality be no nearer than he is at present 
to the First Cause, the Inscrutable Mystery, the Gop. 
There is but a difference in degree between the chemist 
who to-day arranges forces in his laboratory so that 
they produce a gas, and the creator who arranges forces 
so that they produce a world; between the gardener 
who plants a seed, and the creator who plants a nebula. 
It is a question for us now to consider whether we have 
any personal relations towards the Supreme Power, 
whether there exists another world in which we shall 
. be requited according to our actions. Not only is this 
a grand problem of philosophy; it is of all questions 
the most practical for us, the one in which our interests 
are most vitally concerned. This life is short, and its 
pleasures are poor; when we have obtained what we 
desire, it is nearly time to die. If it can be shown that, 
by living in a certain manner, eternal happiness may 
be obtained, then clearly no one except a fool or a mad- 
man would refuse to live in such a manner. We shall 
therefore examine the current theory respecting the 
nature of the Creator, the design of Creation, and the 
future destiny of Man. But before we proceed to this 
inquiry, we must first state that we intend to separate 
theology from morality. Whatever may be the nature 
of the Deity, and whether there is a future life or not, 
the great moral laws can in no way be changed. God 
is a purely scientific question. Whether he is personal 
or impersonal, definable or undefinable, our duties and 


THEORY OF GOD 461 


responsibilities remain the same. The existence of a 
heaven and a hell can affect our calculations, but can- 
not affect our moral liabilities. 

The popular theory is this:—The world was made 
by a Great Being; he created man in his own image; 
and therefore his mind is analogous to that of man. 
But while our minds are imperfect, troubled by pas- 
sions, stained with sin, and limited in power, his mind 
is perfect in beauty, perfect in power, perfect in love. 
He is omnipotent and omnipresent. He loves men 
whom he has made, but he sorrows over their trans- 
gressions. He has placed them on earth as a means of 
probation; those who have sinned and repent, those 
who are contrite and humble, he will forgive, and on 
them he will bestow everlasting happiness. Those who 
are wicked, and stubborn, and hard of heart, those who 
deny and resist his authority, he will punish according 
to his justice. This reward is bestowed, this punish- 
ment is inflicted on the soul, a spirit which dwells 
within the body during life. It is something entirely 
distinct from the intellect or mind. The soul of the 
poorest creature in the streets and the soul of the great- 
est philosopher or poet are equal before the Creator; 
he is no respecter of persons; souls are measured only 
by their sins. But the sins of the ignorant will be 
forgiven; the sins of the more enlightened will be more 
severely judged. 

Now this appears a very reasonable theory as long 
as we do not examine it closely, and as long as we do 
not carry out its propositions to their full extent. But 
when we do so, we find that it conducts us to absurdity, 
as we shall very quickly prove. 

The souls of idiots not being responsible for their 
sins will go to heaven; the souls of such men as Goethe 
and Rousseau are in danger of hell-fire. Therefore it 
is better to be born an idiot than to be born a Goethe 
or a Rousseau; and that is altogether absurd. 


A462 DUTIES OF A CREATOR. 


It is asserted that the doctrine of the immortality of 
the soul, and of happiness in a future state gives us 
a solution of that distressing problem, the misery of the 
innocent on earth. But in reality it does nothing of the 
kind. It does not explain the origin of evil, and it does 
not justify the existence of evil. A poor helpless infant 
ig thrust into the world by a higher force; it has 
done no one any charm, yet it is tortured in the most 
dreadful manner; it is nourished in vice, and crime, and 
disease; it is allowed to suffer a certain time and then 
it is murdered. It is all very well to say that after- 
wards it was taken to everlasting bliss; but why was 
it not taken there direct? If a man has a child and 
beats that child for no reason whatever, is it any pal- 
liation of the crime to say that he afterwards gave it 
cake and wine? 

This brings us to the character of the Creator. We 
must beg to observe again that we describe, not the 
actual Creator, but the popular idea of the Creator. 
It is said that the Supreme Power has a mind; this 
we deny, and to show that our reasons for denying it 
are good, we shall proceed to criticise this imaginary 
mind. 7 

In the first place, we shall state as an incontrovertible 
maxim in morality that a god has no right to create men 
except for their own good. This may appear to the 
reader an extraordinary statement; but had he lived 
in France at the time of Louis XIV, he would also have 
thought it an extraordinary statement that kings existed 
for the good of the people and not people for the good 
of kings. When the Duke of Burgundy first pronounced 
that axiom, St Simon, by no means a servile courtier, 
and an enlightened man for his age, was “delighted with 
the benevolence of the saying, but startled by its novelty 
and terrified by its boldness.” Our proposition may 
appear very strange, but it certainly cannot be refuted; 
for if it is said that the Creator is so great that he is 


CRUELTIES OF A CREATION 463 


placed above our laws of morality, then what is that 
but placing Might above Right? And if the maxim 
be admitted as correct, then how can the phenomena 
of life be justified? 

It is said that the Creator is omnipotent, and also 
that he is benevolent. But one proposition contradicts 
the other. It is said that he is perfect in power, and 
that he is also perfect in purity. We shall show that 
he cannot possibly be both. 

The conduct of a father towards his child appears to 
be cruel, but it is not cruel in reality. He beats the 
child, but he does it for the child’s own good; he is 
not omnipotent; he is therefore obliged to choose be- 
tween two evils. But the Creator is omnipotent; he 
therefore chooses cruelty as a means of education or 
development; he therefore has a preference for cruelty 
or he would not choose it; he is therefore fond of 
cruelty or he would not prefer it; he is therefore cruel, 
which is absurd. 

Again, either sin entered the world against the will 
of the Creator, in which case he is not omnipotent, or 
it entered with his permission, in which case it is his 
agent, in which case he selects sin, in which case he 
has a preference for sin, in which case he is fond of sin, 
in which case he is sinful, which is an absurdity again. 

The good in this world predominates over the bad; 
the good is ever increasing, the bad is ever diminishing. 
But if God is Love why is there any bad at all? Is the 
world like a novel in which the villains are put in to 
make it more dramatic, and in which virtue only 
triumphs in the third volume? It is certain that the 
feelings of the created have in no way been considered. 
If indeed there were a judgment-day it would be for 
man to appear at the bar not as a criminal but as an 
accuser. What has he done that he should be sub- 
jected to a life of torture and temptation? God might 
have made us all happy, and he has made us all miser- 


464 IMMORALITY OF CREATION 


able. Is that benevolence? God might have made 
us all pure, and he has made us all sinful, Is that 
the perfection of morality? If I believed in the exist- 
ence of this man-created God, of this divine Nebuchad- 
nezzar, I would say, You can make me live in your 
world, O Creator, but you cannot make me admire it 
you can load me with chains, but you cannot make me 
flatter you; you can send me to hell-fire, but you can- 
not obtain my esteem. And if you condemn me, you 
condemn yourself. If I have committed sins, you in- 
vented them, which is worse. If the watch you have 
made does not go well, whose fault is that? Is it ra~ 
tional to damn the wheels and the springs? 

But it is when we open the Book of Nature, that 
book inscribed in blood and tears; it is when we study 
the laws regulating life, the laws productive of develop- 
ment, that we see plainly how illusive is this theory 
that God is Love. In all things there is cruel, profli- 
gate, and abandoned waste. Of all the animals that 
are born a few only can survive; and it is owing to 
this law that development takes place. The law of 
Murder is the law of Growth. Life is one long tragedy; 
creation is one great crime. And not only is there 
waste in animal and human life, there is also waste in 
moral life. The instinct of love is planted in the human 
breast, and that which to some is a solace is to others 
a torture. How many hearts yearning for affection are 
blighted in solitude and coldness. How many women 
seated by their lonely firesides are musing of the days 
that might have been. How many eyes when they 
meet these words which remind them of their sorrows 
will be filled with tears. O cold, cruel, miserable life, 
how long are your pains, how brief are your delights! 
What are joys but pretty children that grow into re- 
grets? What is happiness but a passing dream in which 
we seem to be asleep, and which we know only to have 
been when it is past? Pain, grief, disease, and death, 


THE THEORY EXPLODED 465 


are these the inventions of a loving God? That no 
animal shall rise to excellence except by being fatal to 
the life of others, is this the law of a kind Creator? 
It is useless to say that pain has its benevolence, that 
massacre has its mercy. Why is it so ordained that bad 
should be the raw material of good? Pain is not less 
pain because it is useful; murder is not less murder 
because it is conducive to development. Here is blood 
upon the hand still, and all the perfumes of Arabia will 
not sweeten 1t. 

To this then are we brought with the much-belauded 
theory of a semi-human Providence, an anthropoid 
Deity, a Constructive Mind, a Deus Paleyensis, a God 
created in the image of a watch-maker. What then 
are we to infer? Why, simply this, that the current 
theory is false; that all attempts to define the Creator 
bring us only to ridiculous conclusions; that the Su- 
preme Power is not a Mind, but something higher than 
a Mind; not a Force, but something higher than a 
Force; not a Being, but something higher than a Being; 
something for which we have no words, something for 
which we have no ideas. We are to infer that Man 
is not made in the image of his Maker, and that Man 
can no more understand his Maker than the beetles and 
the worms can understand him. As men in the Days of 
Ignorance endeavoured to discover perpetual motion, 
and the philosopher’s stone, so now they endeavour to 
define God. But in time also they will learn that the 
nature of the Deity is beyond the powers of the human 
intellect to solve. The universe is anonymous; it is pub- 
lished under secondary laws; these at least we are able 
to investigate, and in these perhaps we may find a par- 
tial solution of the great problem. The origin of evil 
cannot be explained, for we cannot explain the origin 
of matter. But a careful and unprejudiced study of 
nature reveals an interesting fact and one that will be 
of value to mankind. 


466 THE TRUTH 


The Earth resembles a picture, of which we, like in- 
sects which crawl upon its surface, can form but a faint 
and incoherent idea. We see here and there a glorious 
flash of colour; we have a dim conception that there is 
union in all its parts; yet to us, because we are so near, 
the tints appear to be blurred and confused. But let us 
expand our wings and flutter off into the air; let us fly 
some distance backwards into Space until we have 
reached the right point of view. And now the colours 
blend and harmonise together, and we see that picture 
represents One Man. 

The body of a human individual is composed of cell- 
like bodies which are called “physiological units.” Each 
cell or atom has its own individuality; it grows, it is 
nurtured, it brings forth young, and it dies. It is in 
fact an animalcule. It has its own body and its own 
mind. As the atoms are to the human unit, so the 
human units are to the human whole. There is only 
One Man upon the earth; what we call men are not in- 
dividuals but components; what we call death is merely 
the bursting of a cell; wars and epidemics are merely 
inflammatory phenomena incident on certain stages of 
growth. There is no such thing as a ghost or soul; 
the intellects of men resemble those instincts which in- 
habit the corpuscules, and which are dispersed when 
the corpuscule dies. Yet they are not lost, they are 
preserved within the body and enter other forms. Men 
therefore have no connection with Nature, except 
through the organism to which they belong. Nature 
does not recognise their individual existence. But each 
atom is conscious of its life; each atom can improve it- 
self in beauty and in strength; each atom can therefore, 
in an infinitesimal degree, assist the development of 
the Human Mind. If we take the life of a single atom, 
that is to say of a single man, or if we look only at a 
single group, all appears to be cruelty and confusion; 
but when we survey mankind as One, we find it be- 


SHOULD THE TRUTH BE TOLD? 467 


coming more and more noble, more and more divine, 
slowly ripening towards perfection. We belong to the 
minutiz of Nature, we are in her sight, as the rain-drop 
in the sky; whether a man lives, or whether he dies, 
is as much a matter of indifference to Nature as whether 
a rain-drop falls upon the field and feeds a blade of 
grass, or falls upon a stone and is dried to death. She 
does not supervise these small details. This discovery 
is by no means flattering, but it enlarges our idea of 
the scheme of creation. That universe must indeed be 
great in which human beings are so small. 

The following facts result from our investigations:— 
Supernatural Christianity is false. God-worship is 
idolatry. Prayer is useless. The soul is not immortal. 
There are no rewards and there are no punishments 
in a future state. 

It now remains to be considered whether it is right 
to say so. It will doubtless be supposed that I shall 
make use of the plea that a writer is always justified 
in publishing the truth, or what he conscientiously be- 
lieves to be the truth, and that if it does harm he is 
not to blame. But I shall at once acknowledge that 
truth is only a means towards an end,—the welfare of 
the human race. If it can be shown that by speaking 
the truth an injury is inflicted on mankind, then a 
stubborn adherence to truth becomes merely a Pharisee 
virtue, a spiritual pride. But in moral life Truth, though 
not infallible, is our safest guide, and those who main- 
tian that it should be repressed must be prepared to 
bring forward irrefutable arguments in favour of their 
cause. If so much as the shadow of a doubt remains, 
their client, Falsehood, is non-suited, and Truth remains 
in possession of the conscience. Let us now hear what 
the special pleaders have to say. The advocates for 
Christianity versus Truth will speak first, and I shall 
reply; and then the advocates for deism will state their 
case. What they will endeavour to prove is this, that 


468 CHRISTIANITY VERSUS TRUTH 


even admitting the truth of my propositions, it is an 
immoral action to give them to the world. On the other 
hand, I undertake to show that the destruction of Chris- 
tianity is essential to the interests of civilisation; and 
also that man will never attain his full powers as a 
moral being until he has ceased to believe in a personal 
God and in the immorality of the soul. 

“Christianity, we allow, is human in its origin, er- 
roneous in its theories, delusive in its threats and its 
rewards. Jesus Christ was a man with all the faults 
and imperfections of the prophetic charaeter. The Bible 
is simply a collection of Jewish writings. The miracles 
in the Old Testament deserve no more attention from 
historians than the miracles in Homer. The miracles 
in the gospels are like the miracles in Plutarch’s lives; 
they do not lessen the value of the biography, and the 
value of the biography does not lessen the absurdity 
of the miracles. So far we go with you. But we assert 
that this religion with all its errors has rendered inesti- 
mable services to civilisation, and that it is so insep- 
arably associated in the minds of men with purity of life, 
and the precepts of morality, that it is impossible to 
attack Christianity without also attacking all that is 
good, all that is pure, all that is lovely in human nature. 
When you travelled in Africa did you not join in the 
sacrifices of the pagans? Did you not always speak 
with respect of their wood spirits and their water spirits, 
and their gods of the water and the sky? And did 
you not take off your shoes when you entered the 
mosque, and did you not, when they gave you the re- 
ligious blessing, return the religious reply? And since 
you could be so tolerant to savages surely you are bound 
to be more tolerant still to those who belong to your 
own race, to those who possess a nobler religion, and 
whose minds can be made by a careless word to suffer 
the most exquisite pain. Yet you attack Christianity, 
and you attack it in the wrong way. You ought, in 


DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 469 


the interest of your own cause, to write in such a manner 
that minds might be gradually trained to reflection, and 
decoyed to doubt. It is not only heartless and inhuman, 
it is also unwise, it is also unscientific to say things 
which will shock and disgust those who are beginning 
to inquire, and it is bad taste to jest on subjects 
which if not sacred in themselves are held sacred in 
the eyes of many thoughtful and cultivated men. You 
ought to adopt a tone of reluctance and to demonstrate, 
as it were against your will, the errors of the popular 
religion. Believers at least have a right to demand that 
if you discuss these questions upon which their hopes 
of eternal happiness are based, you will do so with 
gravity and decorum.” 

To this I reply that the religion of the Africans, 
whether pagan or moslem, is suited to their intellects, 
and is therefore a true religion; and the same may be 
said of Christianity amongst uneducated people. But 
Christianity is not in accordance with the cultivated 
mind; it can only be accepted or rather retained by 
suppressing doubts, and by denouncing inquiry as sinful. 
It is therefore a superstition, and ought to be destroyed. 
With respect to the services which it once rendered to 
civilisation, I cheerfully acknowledge them, but the 
same argument might once have been advanced in favour 
of the oracle at Delphi, without which there would have 
been no Greek culture, and therefore no Christianity. 
The question is not whether Christianity assisted the 
civilisation of our ancestors, but whether it is now assist- 
ing our own. I am firmly persuaded that whatever is 
injurious to the intellect is also injurious to moral life; 
and on this conviction I base my conduct with respect 
to Christianity. That religion is pernicious to the in- 
tellect; it demands that the reason shall be sacrificed 
upon the altar; it orders civilised men to believe in the 
legends of a savage race. It places a hideous image, 
covered with dirt and blood, in the Holy of Holies; it 


470 CHRISTIANITY EXPOSED 


rends the sacred Veil of Truth in twain. It teaches 
that the Creator of the Universe, that sublime, that in- 
scrutable power, exhibited his back to Moses, and or- 
dered Hosea to commit adultery, and Ezekiel to eat 
dung. There is no need to say anything more. Such 
a religion is blasphemous and foul. Let those admire 
it who are able. I, for my part, feel it my duty to 
set free from its chains as many as I can. Upon this 
point my conscience speaks clearly, and it shall be 
obeyed. With respect to manner and means, I shall 
use the arguments and the style best suited for my 
purpose. There has been enough of writing by impli- 
cation and by innuendo; I do not believe in its utility, 
and I do not approve of its disguise. There should 
be no deceit in matters of religion. In my future as- 
saults on Christianity I shall use the clearest language 
that I am able to command. Ridicule is a destructive 
instrument, and it is my intention to destroy. If a 
man is cutting down a tree, it is useless asking him 
not to strike so hard. But because I make use of ridi- 
cule, it does not follow that I am writing merely for 
amusement; and because I tear up a belief by the 
roots, it does not follow that I am indifferent to the 
pain which I inflict. Great revolutions cannot be ac- 
complished without much anguish and some evil being 
caused. Did not the Roman women suffer when the 
Christians came and robbed them of their gods, and 
raised their minds, through pain and sorrow, to a higher 
faith? The religion which I teach is as high above 
Christianity as that religion was superior to the idolatry 
of Rome. And when the relative civilisations of the two 
ages are compared, this fetich of ink and paper, this 
Syrian book is, in truth, not less an idol than those 
statues which obtained the adoration of the Italians 
and the Greeks. The statues were beautiful as statues; 
the book is admirable as a book; but the statues did 
not come down from heaven; the book was not a magi- 


THE IDOL OF PAPER AND INK 471 


eal composition; it bears the marks not only of human 
genius, but also of human depravity and superstition. 

As for the advocates of Deism they acknowledge that 
Christianity is unsuited to the mental condition of the 
age; they acknowledge that the Bible ought to be at- 
tacked as Xenophanes attacked Homer; they acknowl- 
edge that the fable of a God impregnating a woman, of a 
god living on the earth, are relics of pagan supersti- 
tion; they acknowledge that the doctrine of eterna] pun- 
ishment is incompatible with justice, and is therefore 
incompatible with God. But they declare that Chris- 
tianity should not be destroyed but reformed; that its 
barbarous elements should be expelled, and that then, 
as a pure God-worship, it should be offered to the world, 
“It is true, that God is an idol, an image made of human 
ideas which, to superior beings, would appear as coarse 
and vile for such a purpose as the wood and the stone 
of the savage appear to us. But this idolatry is con- 
ducive to the morality of man. That exquisite form 
which he raises in his mind, and before which he 
prostrates himself in prayer, that God of purity and 
love becomes his ideal and example. As the Greek 
women placed statues of Apollo and Narcissus in 
their chambers that the beauty of the marble form might 
enter their wombs through the windows of their eyes, 
so by ever contemplating perfection, the mind is en- 
nobled, and the actions born of it are divine, And 
surely it is a sweet and. consoling faith that there is 
above us a great and benignant Being who, when the 
sorrows of this life are past, will take us to himself. 
How can it injure men to believe that the righteous 
will be rewarded and that the wicked will be punished 
in a future state? What good can be done by destroying 
a belief so full of solace for the sorrowful, so full of 
promise for the virtuous, so full of terror for the work- 
ers of iniquity? You do not deny that ‘much anguish 
and some evil will be caused’ by the destruction of this 


472 DEFENCE OF DEISM 


belief; and what have you to show on the other side? 
what will you place in the balance? Consider what a 
dreadful thing it is to take even from a single human 
being the hopes of a future hfe. All men cannot be 
philosophers; all cannot resign themselves with fortitude 
and calm to the death-warrant of the soul. Annihilation 
has perhaps more terrors for the mind than eternal pun- 
ishment itself. O, make not the heart an orphan, cast 
it not naked and weeping on the world. Take it not 
away from its father, kill not its hopes of an eternal 
home. ‘There are mothers whose children have gone 
before them to the grave, poor miserable women whose 
beauty is faded, who have none to care for them on 
earth, whose only happiness is in the hope that when 
their life is ended they will be joined again to those 
whom they have lost. And will you take that hope 
away? There are men who have passed their whole lives 
in discipline and self-restraint, that they may be re- 
warded in a future state; will you tell them that they 
have lived under an illusion, that they would have done 
better to laugh, and to feast, and to say Let us make 
merry, for to-morrow we shall die? There are men 
whom the fear of punishment in a future life deters 
from vice and perhaps from crime. Will you dare to 
spread a doctrine which unlooses all restraints, and 
leaves men to the fury of their passions? It is true 
that we are not demoralised by this belief in the im- 
personality of God and the extinction of the soul; but 
it would be a dangerous belief for those who are ex- 
posed to strong temptations, and whose minds have not 
been raised by culture to the religion of dignity and 
self-control.” 

In the first place, I admit that the worship and con- 
templation of a man-like but ideal Being must have, 
through the law of Imitation, an ennobling effect on 
the mind of the idolater, but only so long as the belief 
in such a Being harmonises with the intellect. It has 


INEXORABLE LOGIC 473 


been shown that this theory of a benignant God is 
contradicted by the laws of nature. We must judge of 
the tree by its fruits; we must judge of the maker by 
that which he has made. The Author of the world 
invented not only the good but also the evil in the 
world; he invented cruelty; he invented sin. If he 
invented sin how can he be otherwise than sinful? 
And if he invented cruelty how can he be otherwise 
than cruel? From this inexorable logic we can only 
escape by giving up the hypothesis of a personal Cre- 
ator. Those who believe in a God of Love must close 
their eyes to the phenomena of life, or garble the uni- 
verse to suit their theory. This, it is needless to say, is 
injurious to the intellect; whatever is injurious to the 
intellect is injurious to morality; and, therefore, the 
belief in a God of Love is injurious to morality. 
God-worship must be classed with those provisional ex- 
pedients, Famine, War, Slavery, the Inequality of Con- 
ditions, the Desire of Gain, which Nature employs for 
the development of man, and which she throws aside 
when they have served her turn, as a carpenter changes 
his tools at the various stages of his work. 

The abolition of this ancient and elevated faith; the 
dethronement of God; the extinction of piety as a per- 
sonal feeling; the destruction of an Image made of 
golden thoughts in the exquisite form of an Ideal Man, 
and tenderly enshrined in the human heart—these ap- 
pear to be evils, and such undoubtedly they are. But 
the conduct of life is a choice of evils. We can do noth- 
ing that is exclusively and absolutely good. Le genre 
humain n’est pas placé entre le bien et le mal, mais 
entre le mal et le pire. No useful inventions can be in- 
troduced without some branch of industry being killed 
and hundreds of worthy men being cast, without an oc- 
cupation, on the world. All mental revolutions are 
attended by catastrophe. The mummeries and massa- 
res of the German Reformation, though known only 


474 THE MORAL VALUE OF HELL-FIRE 


to scholars, were scarcely less horrible than those of 
Paris in 793; and both periods illustrate the same law. 
I have facts in my possession which would enable me 
to show that the abolition of the slave trade, that im- 
mortal and glorious event, caused the death of many 
thousand slaves, who were therefore actually killed by 
Sharp, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and their adherents. But 
by means of abolition millions of lives have since been 
saved. The first generation suffered; prisoners were 
captured to be sold, and the market having been sup- 
pressed, were killed. This was undoubtedly an evil. 
But then the slave-making wars came to an end, and 
there was peace. In the same manner I maintain that 
even should the present generation be injured by the 
abolition of existing faiths, yet abolition would be 
justified. Succeeding generations would breathe an at- 
mosphere of truth instead of being reared in an atmos- 
phere of falsehood, and we who are so deeply indebted 
to our ancestors have incurred obligations towards our 
posterity. Let us therefore purify the air, and if 
the light kills a few sickly plants which have be- 
come acclimatised to impurity and darkness, we must 
console ourselves with the reflection that in Nature it is 
always so, and that of two evils we have chosen that 
which is the least. But the dangers of the Truth are 
not so great as is commonly supposed. It is often said 
that if the fears of hell-fire were suddenly removed 
men would abandon themselves without restraint to 
their propensities and appetites; recklessness and de- 
spair would take possession of the human race, and 
society would be dissolved. But I believe that the 
fears of hell-fire have scarcely any power upon earth 
at all, and that when they do act upon the human mind 
it is to make it pious, not to make it good. A meta- 
physical theory cannot restrain the fury of the passions: 
as well attempt to bind a lion with a cobweb. Pre- 
vention of crime, it is well known, depends not on the 


THE TRUE SOURCES OF MORALITY 475 


severity but on the certainty of retribution. Just as 
a criminal is often acquitted by the jury because the 
penalties of the law are disproportioned to the magni- 
tude of the offence, so the diabolic laws which inflict 
an eternal punishment for transitory sins have been 
tempered by a system of free pardons which deprive 
them of any efficiency they might have once possessed. 
What would be the use of laws against murder if the 
condemned criminal could obtain his liberty by apolo- 
gising to the Queen? Yet such is the Christian system, 
which, though in one sense beautiful on account of its 
mercy, is also immoral on account of its indulgence. 
The supposition that the terrors of hell-fire are essential 
or even conducive to good morals, is contradicted by 
the facts of history. In the Dark Ages there was not 
a man or a woman, from Scotland to Naples, who 
doubted that sinners were sent to hell. The religion 
which they had was the same as ours, with this excep- 
tion, that everyone believed in it. The state of Europe 
in that pious epoch need not be described. Society is 
not maintained by the conjectures of theology, but by 
those moral sentiments, those gregarious virtues which 
elevated men above the animals, which are now in- 
stinctive in our natures, and to which intellectual culture 
is propitious. For, as we become more and more en- 
lightened, we perceive more and more clearly that it 
is with the whole human population as it was with the 
primeval clan, the welfare of every individual is de- 
pendent on the welfare of the community, and the wel- 
fare of the community depends on the welfare of every 
individual. Our conscience teaches us it is right, our 
reason teaches us it is useful, that men should live 
according to the golden rule. This conduct of life is 
therefore enjoined upon every man by his own instincts, 
and also by the voice of popular opinion. Those cannot 
be happy who are detested and despised by their fellow- 
men; and as for those, the outlaws of society, who, like 


476 THE SPURIOUS VIRTUES OF THEOLOGY 


domestic animals run wild, herd together in secret places, 
and, faithful only to their own gang, make war upon 
mankind, the Law, which is seldom evaded, the Law 
which never forgives, chases them from den to den, and 
makes their lives as full of misery as they are full of 
crime. 

The current religion is indirectly adverse to morals, 
because it is adverse to the freedom of the intellect. 
But it is also directly adverse to morals by inventing 
spurious and bastard virtues. One fact must be 
familiar to all those who have any experience of human 
nature. A sincerely religious man is often an exceed- 
ingly bad man, Piety and vice frequently live together 
in the same dwelling, occupying different. chambers, but 
remaining always on the most amicable terms. Nor is 
there anything remarkable in this. Religion is merely 
loyalty: it is just as irrational to expect a man to be 
virtuous because he goes to church, as it would be to 
expect him to be virtuous because he went to court. 
His king, it is true, forbids immorality and fraud. But 
the chief virtues required are of the lickspittle denom- 
ination—what is called a humble and a contrite heart. 
When a Christian sins as a man, he makes compensation 
as a courtier. When he has injured a fellow-creature, 
he goes to church with more regularity, he offers up 
more prayers, he reads a great number of chapters in 
the Bible, and so he believes that he has cleared off 
the sins that are laid to his account. This, then, is the 
immorality of religion as it now exists. It creates arti- 
ficial virtues and sets them off against actual vices. 
Children are taught to do this and that, not because it 
is good, but to please the king. When Christians are 
informed that not only our physical but our moral ac- 
tions are governed by unchangeable law, and that the 
evil treatment of the mind, like the evil treatment of 
the body, is punished by a loss of happiness and health, 
they cry out against a doctrine which is so just and so 


THE CHRISTIAN CUURTIER 477 


severe. They are like the young Roman nobles who 
complained when the Tarquins were expelled, saying, 
that a king was a human being, that he could be angry 
and forgive, that there was room for favour and kind- 
ness, but that the law was a deaf and inexorable thing 
—leges rem surdam inexorabilem esse, that it allowed 
of no relaxation and indulgence—nihil laxamenti nec 
vene habere, and that it was a dangerous thing for 
weak and erring men to live by their integrity alone— 
periculosum esse in tot humanis erroribus sola innocentia 
vivere. Christians believe themselves to be the aris- 
tocracy of heaven upon earth; they are admitted to the 
spiritual court, while millions of men in foreign lands 
have never been presented. They bow their knees and 
say that they are miserable sinners, and their hearts 
rankle with abominable pride. Poor infatuated fools! 
Their servility is real, and their insolence is real, but 
their king is a phantom and their palace is a dream. 
Even with Christians of comparatively blameless lives 
their religion is injurious. It causes a waste of moral 
force. There are passionate desires of virtue, yearnings 
for the good, which descend from time to time like a 
holy spirit upon all cultivated minds, and from which, 
strange as it may seem, not even free thinkers are ex- 
cluded. When such an impulse animates the godless 
man he expends it in the service of mankind: the Chris- 
tian wastes it on the air; he fasts, he watches, and he 
prays. And what, is the object of all his petitions and 
salaams? He will tell you that he is trying to save his 
soul. But the strangest feature in the case is this. He 
not only thinks that it is prudent and wise on his part 
to improve his prospects of happiness in a future state; 
he considers it the noblest of all virtues. But there | 
is no great merit in taking care of one’s own interests 
whether it be in this world or the next. The man who 
leads a truly religious life in order to go to heaven 
is not more to be admired than the man who leads a 


478 THE SELFISHNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 


regular and industrious life in order to make a fortune 
in the city; and the man who endeavours to secure a 
celestial inheritance by going to church, and by reading 
chapters in the Bible, and by having family prayers, 
and by saying grace in falsetto with eyes hypocritically 
closed, is not above the level of those who fawn and 
flatter at oriental courts in order to obtain a monopoly 
or an appointment. 

The old proverb holds good in religious as in ordinary 
life, that self-preservation is the first law of Nature. 
As long as men believe that there is a God or King 
who will listen to their prayers and who will change his 
mind at their request; as long as they believe that they 
can obtain a mansion in the heavenly Belgravia, so long 
they will place the duties of the courtier above the 
duties of the man, so long they will believe that flattery 
is pleasing to the Most High, so long they will believe 
that they can offend against the law and escape the 
penalties of the law, so long they will believe that acts 
of devotion may be balanced against acts of immorality, 
so long they will make selfishness a virtue, and salvation 
of the soul a higher principle of conduct than social 
love. But when the faith in a personal god is extin- 
guished; when prayer and praise are no longer to be 
heard; when the belief is universal that with the body 
dies the soul, then the false morals of theology will 
no longer lead the human mind astray. Piety and 
virtue will become identical. The desire to do good 
which arose in necessity, which was developed by the 
hopes of a heavenly reward is now an instinct of the 
human race. Those hopes and illusion served as the 
scaffolding, and may now safely be removed. There 
will always be enthusiasts for virtue as there are now, 
men who adorn and purify their souls before the mirror 
of their conscience, and who strive to attain an ideal 
excellence in their actions and their thoughts. If from 
such men as these the hope of immortality is taken, will 


THE TRUE RELIGION 479 


their natures be transformed? Will they who are almost 
angels turn straightway into beasts? Will the sober 
become drunkards? Will the chaste become sensual? 
Will the honest become fraudulent? Will the industri- 
ous become idle? Will the righteous love that which 
they have learnt to loathe? Will they who have won 
by hard struggles the sober happiness of virtue return 
to the miseries of vice by which few men have not 
at one time or another been enthralled? No; they will 
pass through some hours of affliction; they will bear an- 
other illusion to the grave; not the first that they have 
buried, not the first they have bewailed. And then, no 
longer able to hope for themselves, they will hope for 
the future of the human race: unable to believe in an 
eared God who listens to human supplications they will 
coin the gold of their hearts into useful actions instead 
of burning it as incense before an imaginary throne. 
We do not wish to extirpate religion from the life of 
man; we wish him to have a religion which will har- 
monise with his intellect, and which inquiry will 
strengthen, not destroy. We wish, in fact, to give him 
a religion, for now there are many who have none. We 
teach that there is a God, but not a God of the anthro- 
poid variety, not a God who is gratified by compliments 
in prose and verse, and whose attributes can be cata- 
logued by theologians. God is so great that he cannot 
be defined by us. God is so great that he does not deign 
to have personal relations with us human atoms that 
are called men. Those who desire to worship their 
Creator must worship him through mankind. Such, it is 
plain, is the scheme of Nature. We are placed under 
secondary laws, and these we must obey. To develop to 
the utmost our genius and our love, that is the only true 
religion. To do that which deserves to be written, to 
write that which deserves to be read, to tend the sick, 
to comfort the sorrowful, to animate the weary, to keep 
the temple of the body pure, to cherish the divinity 


480 THE UNION OF PIETY AND VIRTUE 


within us, to be faithful to the intellect, to educate 
those powers which have been entrusted to our charge 
and to employ them in the service of humanity, that is 
all that we can do. Then our elements shall be dis- 
persed and all is at an end. All is at an end for the 
unit, all is at an end for the atom, all is at an end for 
the speck of flesh and blood with the little spark of 
instinct which it calls its mind, but all is not at an end 
for the actual Man, the true Being, the glorious One. 
We teach that the soul is immortal; we teach that there 
is a future life; we teach that there is a Heaven in the 
ages far away ; but not for us single corpuscules, not 
for us dots of animated jelly, but for the One of whom 
we are the elements, and who, though we perish, never 
dies, but grows from period to period and by the united 
efforts of single molecules called men, or of those cell- 
groups called nations is raised towards the Divine power 
which he will finally attain. Our religion therefore is 
Virtue, our Hope is placed in the happiness of our pos- 
terity; our Faith is the Perfectibility of Man. A day 
will come when the European God of the nineteenth cen- 
tury will be classed with the gods of Olympus and the 
Nile; when surplices and sacramental plate will be ex- 
hibited in museums; when nurses will relate to children 
the legends of the Christian mythology as they now tell 
them fairy tales. A day will come when the current 
belief in property after death (for is not existence prop- 
erty, and the dearest property of all?) will be accounted 
a strange and selfish idea, Just as we smile at the savage 
chief who believes that his gentility will be continued 
in the world beneath the ground, and that he will there 
be attended by his concubines and slaves. A day will 
come when mankind will be as the Family of the Forest, 
which lived faithfully within itself according to the 
golden rule in order that it might not die. But Love 
not Fear will unite the human race. The world will 
become a heavenly Commune to which men will bring 


THE SACRED CAUSE 481 


the inmost treasures of their hearts, in which they will re- 
serve for themselves not even a hope, not even the 
shadow of a joy, but will give up all for all mankind. 
With one faith, with one desire they will labour to- 
gether in the Sacred Cause—the extinction of disease, 
the extinction of sin, the perfection of genius, the per- 
fection of love, the invention of immortality, the ex- 
ploration of the infinite, the conquest of creation. 
You blessed ones who shall inherit that future age of 
which we can only dream; you pure and radiant beings 
who shall succeed us on the earth; when you turn back 
your eyes on us poor savages, grubbing in the ground 
for our daily bread, eating flesh and blood, dwelling in 
vile bodies which degrade us every day to a level with 
the beasts, tortured by pains, and by animal propensi- 
ties, buried in gloomy superstitions, ignorant of Nature 
which yet holds us in her bonds; when you read of us 
in books, when you think of what we are, and compare 
us with yourselves, remember that it is to us you owe 
the foundation of your happiness and grandeur, to us 
who now in our libraries and laboratories and star- 
towers and dissecting-rooms and workshops are prepar- 
ing the materials of the human growth. And as for 
ourselves, if we are sometimes inclined to regret that 
our lot is cast in these unhappy days, let us remember 
how much more fortunate we are than those who lived 
before us a few centuries ago. The working man enjoys 
more luxuries to-day than the King of England in the 
Anglo-Saxon times; and at his command are intellectual 
delights, which but a little while ago the most learned 
in the land could not obtain. All this we owe to the 
labours of other men. Let us therefore remember them 
with gratitude; let us follow their glorious example by 
adding something new to the knowledge of mankind; 
let us pay to the future the debt which we owe to the 
past. All men indeed cannot be poets, inventors, or 
philanthropists; but all men can join in that gigantic 


482 THE DUTY OF MAN 


and god-like work—the progress of creation. Whoever 
improves his own nature improves the universe of which 
he is a part. He who strives to subdue his evil passions 
—vile remnants of the old four-footed life—and who 
cultivates the social affections; he who endeavours to 
better his condition, and to make his children wiser and 
happier than himself; whatever may be his motives, 
he will not have lived in vain. But if he act thus not 
from mere prudence, not in the vain hope of being 
rewarded in another world, but from a pure sense of 
duty, as a citizen of Nature, as a patriot of the planet 
on which he dwells, then our philosophy which once 
appeared to him so cold and cheerless will become a 
religion of the heart, and will elevate him to the skies; 
the virtues which were once for him mere abstract 
terms, will become endowed with life, and will hover 
round him like guardian angels, conversing with him in 
his solitude, consoling him in his afflictions, teaching him 
how to live, and how to die. But this condition is not 
to be easily attained; as the saints and prophets were 
often forced to practise long vigils and fastings and 
prayers before their ecstasies would fall upon them and 
their visions would appear, so Virtue in its purest and 
most exalted form can only be acquired by means of 
severe and long continued culture of the mind. Persons 
with feeble and untrained intellects may live according 
to their conscience; but the conscience itself will be 
defective. To cultivate the intellect is therefore a re- 
ligious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized 
by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect 
should be distrusted, and that it should be subservient 
to faith, will inevitably fall. 

We have written much about inventions and discov- 
eries and transformations of human nature which cannot 
possibly take place for ages yet to come, because we 
think it good that the bright though distant future 
should be ever present in the eyes of man. But we 


THE CHURCH 483 


shall now consider the existing generation, and we shall 
point out the work which must be accomplished, and in 
which all enlightened men should take a part. Chris- 
tianity must be destroyed. The civilised world has out- 
grown that religion, and is now in the condition of the 
Roman Empire in the pagan days. A cold-hearted in- 
fidelity above, a sordid superstition below, a school of 
Plutarchs who endeavour to reconcile the fables of a 
barbarous people with the facts of science and the lofty 
conceptions of philosophy; a multitude of augurs who 
sometimes smile when they meet, but who more often 
feel inclined to sigh, for they are mostly serious and 
worthy men. . Entering the Church in their youth, be- 
fore their minds were formed, they discovered too late 
what it is that they adore, and since they cannot tell 
the truth, and let their wives and children starve, they 
are forced to lead a life which is a lie. What a state 
of society is this in which free-thinker is a term of 
abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as a sin. Men 
have a Bluebeard’s chamber in their minds which they 
dare not open; they have a faith which they dare not 
examine lest they should be forced to cast it from them 
in contempt. Worship is a conventionality, churches are 
bonnet shows, places of assignation, shabby-genteel 
salons where the parochial At Home is given, and re- 
spectable tradesmen exhibit their daughters in the 
wooden stalls. O wondrous, awful, and divine Religion! 
You elevate our hearts from the cares of common life, 
you transport us into the unseen world, you bear us 
upwards to that sublime temple of the skies where 
dwells the Veiled God, whom mortal eye can never 
view, whom mortal mind can never comprehend. How 
art thou fallen! How art thou degraded! But it will 
be only for a time. We are now in the dreary desert 
which separates two ages of Belief. A new era is at 
hand. 

It is incorrect to say “theology is not a progressive 


484 THE NEW REFORMATION 


science.” The worship of ancestral ghosts, the worship 
of pagan deities, the worship of a single God, are suc- 
cessive periods of progress in the science of Divinity. 
And in the history of that science, as in the history of 
all others, a curious fact may be observed. Those who 
overthrow an established system are compelled to attack 
its founders, and to show that their method was unsound, 
that their reasoning was fallacious, that their experi- 
ments were incomplete. And yet the men who create 
the revolution are made in the likeness of the men whose 
doctrines they subvert. The system of Ptolemy was 
supplanted by the system of Copernicus, yet Copernicus 
was the Ptolemy of the sixteenth century. In the same 
manner, we who assail the Christian faith are the true 
successors of the early Christians, above whom we are 
raised by the progress of eighteen hundred years. As 
they preached against gods that were made of stone, 
sO we preach against gods that are made of ideas. As 
they were called atheists and blasphemers so are we. 
And is our task more difficult than theirs? We have 
not, it is true, the same stimulants to offer. We cannot 
threaten that the world is about to be destroyed; we 
cannot bribe our converts with a heaven, we cannot 
make them tremble with a hell. But though our re- 
ligion appears too pure, too unselfish for mankind, it is 
not really so, for we live in a noble and enlightened 
age. At the time of the Romans and the Greeks the 
Christian faith was the highest to which the common 
people could attain. A faith such as that of the Stoics 
and the Sadducees could only be embraced by culti- 
vated minds, and culture was then confined to a chosen 
few. But now knowledge, freedom, and prosperity are 
covering the earth; for three centuries past human vir- 
tue has been steadily increasing, and mankind is pre- 
pared to receive a higher faith. But in order to build 
we must first destroy. Not only the Syrian superstition 
must be attacked, but also the belief in a personal 


THE END 485 


God, which engenders a slavish and oriental condition 
of the mind; and the belief in a posthumous reward 
which engenders a selfish and sclitary condition of the 
heart. These beliefs are, therefore, injurious to human 
nature. They lower its dignity; they arrest its devel- 
opment; they isolate its affections. We shall not deny 
that many beautiful sentiments are often mingled 
with the faith in a personal Deity; and with the hopes 
of happiness in a future state; yet we maintain that, 
however refined they may appear, they are selfish at 
the core, and that if removed they will be replaced by 
sentiments of a nobler and a purer kind. They can- 
not be removed without some disturbance and distress; 
yet the sorrows thus caused are salutary and sublime. 
The supreme and mysterious Power by whom the uni- 
verse has been created, and by whom it has been ap- 
pointed to run its course under fixed and invariable 
law; that awful One to whom it is profanity to pray, 
of whom it is idle and irreverent to argue and debate, 
of whom we should never presume to think save with 
humility and awe; that Unknown God has ordained that 
mankind should be elevated by misfortune, and that 
happiness should grow out of misery and pain. I give 
to universal history a strange but true title— 
The Martyrdom of Man. In each generation the human 
race has been tortured that their children might profit 
by their woes. Our own prosperity is founded on the 
agonies of the past. Is it therefore unjust that we also 
should suffer for the benefit of those who are to come? 
Famine, pestilence, and war are no longer essential for 
the advancement of the human race. But a season of 
mental anguish is at hand, and through this we must 
pass in order that our posterity may rise. The soul must 
be sacrificed; the hope in immortality must die. A sweet 
and charming illusion must be taken from the human 
race, as youth and beauty vanish never to return. 

































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INDEX 


Asp-uL-WAHHAB, 262. 

Srrabaeage of Europe, 418. 

Abraham, } 

Abu Talib, 234. 

Abyssinia, 226; the wonderful well, 228; Prester John, King of, 
299. 


ZEsop, 49. 
Affections, utility of the, 398. 
Africa, 137-144, 240-265, 345. 
Agesilaus, 74, 
Agriculture, early Egyptian, 6; invention of, 380. 
Aldine Press, the, 284. 
Alexander, 74-84. 
Alexandria, 85-94. 
asis, 42. 
Amazons, the, 309; defeated by the Macedonians, 75. 
Anaxagoras, 89. 
es embryonic, 356; domestication of, 379. 
Arabia, 3, 141, 223-259. 
Archimedes, 91. 
Aristotle, 89, 
Art, origin of, 392. 
Arts, the fine, 437. 
Aryans, the, 57, 421. 
Asiatic flaw, the, 441. 
Assyria, Empire of, 46-49. 
Astronomy, study of, by the Egyptians, 7; Copernicus, 92. 
Atlantic, Discovery of the, 97. 
Atlas Mountains, the, 101. 
Avesta, Zend, translation of the, into Greek, 90. 


Baat, the house of, 117. 
Babylon, 42; defeat of, by the Persian Pretender, 71. 
Bambouk, gold mines of, 294. 
Barca, Hamilcar, 115; death of, 119. 
Barter, 381. 
Bedouins, the, in Egypt, 17; flight, 22; invention of God, 162. 
Belisarius, 141. 
Berbers, the, 102. 
Book-hunting age, the, 436 
Brain, 377. 
Breeding laws, 401. 
487 


488 INDEX 


Buddha, 429. 
Buddhism, 429. 
Byzantine Empire, 222-223. 


CAABA, the idols of, 230, 261. 

Caillié, René, 252. 

Caleb, 170. 

Camoens, 304. 

Canaan, 95, 170. 

Carthage, 100-137. 

Cato, 127, 130. 

Cell, history of the, 358. 

Chaldxa, war with Egypt, 45. 

Charlemagne, 433. 

Chastity, origin of, 408. 

China, as a naval power, 44. 

Chosroes the Second, 222. 

Christianity, causes of the failure of, in Africa, 144; death of 
Jesus, 203; the Jewish and Greek party, 204; Paul, 205; 
the spreading of, by the Jews, 206; the primitive Christians, 
206; Rome, 207; the meetings in the catacombs, 210; humility 
and submission, the cardinal virtues, 210; the good tidings, 
211; hell, 211; the missionary age, 212; the ideals, 213; per- 
secutions in Rome, 214; the faith, 215; superstitions, 216; 
the Emperor Constantine, 217; virtues, 218; law, 219; election 
of bishops and presbyters, 219; clergy and laity, 220; the 
Trinity, 221; the heretics, 221; argument as to the falseness 
of, 467; the defence, 469; and exposure, 470; the moral value 
of hell fire, 474; the true sources of morality, 475; the 
spurious virtues of theology, 476; the selfishness of, 478; the 
duty of man, 482. 

Clarkson, Thomas, 315. 

Climate, 377. 

Coal, .359. 

Columbus, Christopher, 296. 

Commerce, origin of, 411. 

Compass, mariner’s, improvement of the, 296. 

Constantine, Emperor, 217, 221. 

Copernicus, 92. 

Cordova, 285. 

Corsica, surrender of, by the Carthaginians to the Romans, 115. 

Cotton, commerce in Africa, 257; slavery of, 334. 

Covilham, 297. 

Creation, cruelty of, 463; immorality of, 464; exploded theory 
of, 465; the truth, 466. 

Creator, theory of a, 461, duties of a, 462. 

Creesus, 49. 

Crusades, the, 435. . 

Cyrene, 104; as a medical school of the Greek world, 105; defeat 
of the Egyptian expedition against, 42. 

Cyrus, 181. 


INDEX 489 


DaHomey, 308. 

Damon, 89. 

Danfodio, the Black Prophet, 263. 

Darius, Emperor of Persia, 50; defeated by the Macedonians, 
75; pursuit of, 75; legend of Alexander on the discovery 
of the body of, 76. | 

Darwinian Law, the, 370. 

David, 175; conquests of, 175. 

Decline of nations, 26; the chief cause, 28. 

Decorum, origin of, 405. 

Democritus, 67. 

Devil, origin of the, 187. 

Dye, discovery of, 96. 


Kartu, the, 355. 

Ecbatana, 47; captured by Alexander of Macedon, 75. 

Egypt, 1-94, 442. 

Elephant-eaters, 20. 

England, conversion of, by the Papists, 276; activity of colonies, 
304; future government of, 455. 

Epiphanes, Antiochus, 182. 

Esau, 164. 

Ethiopia, conquest of, by the Egyptians, 18; Empire of, 33; 
rise and power of, 34. 

Etruscans, 106. 

Euclid, 91. 

Euphrates, tunnel under the, 48. 

Europe, ancient, 266-305, 


FarrH, 153. 

Ferdinand and Isabella, 288. 

Fire, discovery of, 378. 

Fish-eaters, 21. 

Foulas, the, 259. 

France, activity for colonies, 304; slave trade affairs in, 323; the 
Jacobins, 326; the guillotine, 328; death of Robespierre, 328. 


Gama, Vasco da, 300; his return from the Cape, 300. 

Garrison, W. L., 337. 

Gaul, German and Celtic, 266; Roman, 627; the barons, 270. 

Gentiles, the, 190. 

Ghost worship, 150. 

God, theory of, 461; discovery of, 387; of good and evil, 161; 
ghosts become gods, 151; invention of, by the Bedouins, 168. 

Gods dead, the, 443. 

Granada, the kingdom of, 288. 

Greece, 56-92, 439, 444. 

Guinea, coast of, discovery of the, 294. 


Hanwnrpar, 120; death of, 123. 
Heaven, invention of, 388. 


490 INDEX 


Hell, 210; invention of, 389; moral value of the fire of, 474. 
Henry the Navigator, Prince, 290. 
Heraclius, Emperor, 222. 

Herod, 183. 

Herodotus, 64, 68. 

Hesperides, gardens of the, 105. 
Hieroglyphics, 348. 

Holy of Holies, 183. 

Homer, 67, 68. 

Hydraulics of the early Egyptians, 7. 
Hyksos, or shepherd kings, dynasty of, 21. 
Hyppalus, Greek, discovery of the, 224. 


Ipgas, classification of, 397. 

Idolatry, 159. 

Immortality, 460. 

India, 43; war with Egypt, 45; conquered by Persia, 50. 

Indian Ocean, the, 422. 

Inequality of men, 6. 

Inquisition, Athenian, 89. 

Inventions of the future, 458. 

Ionia, 38; commerce with Egypt, 39; conquered by Creesus, 49. 

Isaac, 164. 

Isabella and Ferdinand, 288. 

Ishmael, 164. 

Israelites, religion of the, 163; Abraham and Lot, 163; Isaac, 
Esau, and Jacob, 164; Joseph, 165; finding of Moses, 165; 
Sinai, 166; Moses in exile, 167; Jehovah, 168; he leads the 
Israelites out of Egypt, 169; the tabernacle, 169; mutiny at 
Sinai, 169; the promised land, 170; defeated by the people 
of Canaan, 171; the rising generation, 171; death of Moses, 
171; Joshua, 171; the march of war, 171; occupation of the 
greater part of Palestine, 172; the high priest, 172; Pope 
Samuel, 173; Saul and David, 175; conquests of David, 175; 
Solomon, 176. 


Jacos, 164. 

Jacobins, the, 326. 

Jealousy, origin of, 407. 

Jehovah, 168; character of, 179. 

Jerusalem, destruction of, by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Assyria, 
48 


Hinsage) a F entry into Jerusalem, 192; character of, 199; death 

of, , 

Jews, religion of the, 176; the House of Judah, 176; revolt and 
change of masters, 177; the character of Jehovah, 179; use of 
superstition, 179; commerce, 181; dispersion, 181; restoration 
of the holy vessels by Cyrus, 181; the Greek dynasty, 182; 
Antiochus Epiphanes, 182; pagan altar in the Holy of Holies, 
183; the Maccabees of, 183; Herod, 183; the chosen people, 
184; the study of law, 184; the Sadducees and Pharisees, 


INDEX 491 


185; origin of the devil, 186; the coming of the Messiah, 188; 
the Gentiles, 190; the Passover, 191; Jesus entering Jerusa- 
lem, 192; the gift of prophecy, 193; the prophets, 194; prophet 
versus priest, 196; a prophet martyr, 197; the prophet of 
Nazareth, 198; the character of Jesus, 199; the execution, 203. 

Joseph, 164. 

Joshua, 171. 

Juba, 138, 143. 

Judah, house of, 176. 

Jugurtha, 138. 


Larne, Major, 252. 

Languages, study of, by the Egyptians, 91; origin of, 375. 
Leisure of the Arabs, 4. 

Life, origin of, 356. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 341. 

Locust-eaters, 20. 

Lot, 163. 

Love, origin of, 371. 

Luxury question, 27. 

Lydia, kingdom of, 49; Croesus conquers Ionia, 49. 


Maccasess, the, 183. 

Macedonia, 74-85. 

Magi priests, 47. 

Mahomet, 231-240. 

Mamertines, the, 108. 

Man, origin of, 348; the duty of, 481; future conquests of, 457. 

Mansfield, Lord, 314. 

Marble, the age of, 66. 

Masinissa, 123. 

Matrimonial selection, 406. 

Mecca, 229; blood feuds, 229; Allah Taala, 230; idols of Caaba, 
230, 261; the pilgrimage to, 260; the Great Mosque, 261; 
conduct of Mahomet at, 237. 

Medes, kingdom of, 47. 

Mediterranean, the, 423. 

Memphis, building of, 11. 

Menes, Emperor of Egypt, 11. 

Meroe, capital of Ethiopia, 33. 

Messiah, coming of the, 187. 

Messina, Carthaginians driven out of, 108. 

Mind, development of the, 350. 

Morals, expansion of, 402. 

Moses, finding of, 165; Sinai, 165; in exile, 166; death of, 171. 

Mountains, formation of the, 397. 

Muni Sakya, 428. 

Music, origin of, 393. 


Navcratis, 40 
Nearchus, 77. 


492 INDEX 


Nebuchadnezzar, 48. 

Negro, the 345. 

Nestorian monks, 222. 

Niger, River, discovery of the, 252; the platform, 253. 

Nile Valley, first entry of the Europeans, 38. 

Nile, River, 1; wealth of the, 2; sources of the, 3; inundation 
of the, 6; dikes, reservoirs, and lock-canals of the, 7. 

Nineveh, 47; civilisation of, 47. 

Numidia, 123. 


OatTH, invention of the, 386. 

Oceans, formation of the, 355. 

Old Testament, translation of the, into Greek, 90. 
Orpheus, 67. 

Oumar, the Pilgrim, 264. 


Pacans, the, 430. 

Paine, Tom, 327, 

Palestine, 172. 

Papists, the, 276. 

Park, Mungo, 252. 

Passions, the, 409. 

Passover, the, 191. 

Paul, 205. 

Peckard, Dr, 315. 

Pericles, 73. 

Persia, 50-76, 222-223. 

Pharisees, the, 185. 

Pharmacopeia, compiling of a, by the Egyptians, 14, 

Phidias, 66. 

Phil-Hellenes, 39. 

Philip of Macedonia, 74. 

Pindar, 64. 

Pitt, Mr, 322. 

Pheenicia, 95-100. 

Plants, embryonic, 357. 

Plato, 68, 91. 

Polo, Marco, 285. 

Pontius Pilate, 191. 

Portugal, 290-304. 

Praxiteles, 64. 

Prester, John, King of Abyssinia, 299. 

Priests, reign of the, in Egypt, 9, 14; the Magi, 47; origin of, 
385; versus prophets, 196. 

Primeval people, 147; the live elements, 148; dream revelation, 


149, 
Progress, the catastrophes of, 473; prevented by theology in 
Egypt, 30. 


Prophets, the 193. 
Psammiticus, 36, 39; death of, 42. 


INDEX 493 


Ptolemies, Egypt under the rule of the, 85, 86; brilliant campaigns 
of the, 93; tyranny of the, 94, 


Reape, William Winwood, biographical sketch of, v-xliv 

Reason, dawn of, 368. } 

Reformation, the, 438. 

Religion, 147; early ideas, 148; ghost worship, 150; thing wor- 
ship, 150; gods of good and evil, 151; ghosts become 
gods, 151; ideas of another world, 152; divine hy- 
brids, 152; immortality of the. king, 152; faith, 
development of intellect leads to condensation into 
unity, 154; religion and morality, 155; family feuds, 
156; establishment of individualism, 156; the king- 
doms of joy and pain, 156 ; loyalty and piety, 157; 
science of religion, 158; creed classification, 158; 
idolatry and dollartry, 159; prayer, 160; who made 
God? 161; invention of God by the Bedouins, 162; 
Abraham and Lot, 163; as a means of compressing 
_tribes into nations, 381, as a means of improvement 
of Government, 383; of the future, 448, 

Renaissance, elements of the, 436. 

Revolution, the, 439, 

Rhodopis, 41. 

Robespierre, 328. 

Rock Tibboos, the, 102, 

Rome, 107-142, 445, 

Root-eaters, 20. 

Rosary, the age of the, 434, 

Rosetti Stone, the, 86. 

Rousseau, 312. 


Sasaco, King of Ethiopia, 34. 

Sadducees, the, 185. 

Sahara Desert, 19; terrible silence of the, 19; storms of the, 19; 

the mirage, 19. 

Samuel, Pope, 174. 

Saracens take Persian provinces from the Byzantine Empire, 223. 

Sardinia, surrendered by the Carthaginians to the Romans, 115; 

reconquest, 141. 

Saul, 174. 

Scipio, Carthaginians defeated by, at the battle of Zama, 121. 

Seed-eaters, 20. 

Semetic Race, the, 419, 

Sethos, the priest king of Ethiopia, 36. 

Sharp, Granville, 315. 

Shepherd Kings, or Hyksos, Dynasty of, 21. 

Shepherds, the, 382. 

Sin, origin of, 404. 

Slavery, Egypt, 8; Ethiopia, 33; the trade 305: the West Coast 
of Africa, 306; the Bights, 307; Dahomey, 308; the Amazons, 
309; hard life of the slaves, 310; rebellion, 313; slavery ques- 


494 INDEX. 


tion in London, 314; Granville Sharp, 314; liberation of James 

Somerset by Lord Mansfield, 314; destitution of the slaves 

after release, 315; Thomas Clarkson, 315; William Wilber- 

force, 317; the committee, 321; failure of the Abolition Bill, 

321; indignation meeting, 322; Mr. Pitt’s proposal to France 

refused, 322; affairs in France, 323; St. Domingo, 35; the Ja- 

cobins, 326; Tom Paine, 327; the guillotine in France, 328; 

death of Robespierre, 328; abolition in Europe, 328; the colo- 

nies, 331; the constitution in the United States of America, 

332; the South, 333; cotton, 334; State-rights, 335; W. L. 

Garrison, 337; the liberty fanatics, 337; the plantations, 338; 

the Kansas question, 339; rebellion of the south, 340; seces- 
sion, 341; the result, 342, 

Socrates, death of, 89. 

Solar year, discovery of the, by the Egyptians, 7. 

Solomon, 176. 

Solon, 67. 

Somerset, James, 314. 

Soudan, conquest of the, by the Egyptians, 18; arrival of Egyp- 
tain soldiers at Meroe, 40. 

Soul, theory of the, 461. 

Spain, conquest of, by the Carthaginians, 119; conquered by 
Rome under Scipio, 121; by the Arabs, 285; Cordova, 
285; kingdom of Granada, 288; marriage of Ferdinand and 
Isabella, 288. 

Suez, re-opening of the canal, 91. 

Sun, the, 354. 

Surveying by the early Egyptians, 7. 


Tartars, the, 55. 

Thales, 67. 

Thebes, the library at, 31. 

Theocritus, pastorals of, 91. 

Thing worship, 150. 

Timbuctoo, 103. 

Town, primeval, the 384. 

Trial of the Dead, 15. 

Troglodytes, 20. 

Tuaricks, the, 254. 

Turanians, the, 421. 

Turks, the, in Africa, 264. 

Twig-eaters, 20. 

Tyre, destruction of, by Nebuchadnezzar, 48. 
Tyrians defeated in a great sea battle, 41. 


Unrrep States or América, 332-342, 456, 510. 


Vanpas, the, 141. 

Venice, rise of, 282, 317; government of, 284; Aldine Press, 284; 
Marco Polo, 285. 

Voltaire, 311. 


INDEX 495 


War as the chief agent of civilization in Assyria, 46; Babylon, 
42; Carthage, 100; Egypt, 1; Ethiopia, 18; Greece, 56; India, 
43; Macedonia, Nineveh, 47; Persia, 50; Phoenicia, 95; Rome, 
106; Soudan, 18. ; 

War, the expedient of, 448. 

Wealth and Progress, 28. 

Wilberforce, William, 317. 

Writing, invention of, by the Egyptians, 10. 


XENOPHANES, 67, 88. 
Xeuxis, 64. 


ZOROASTER, 47; translation of the Zend Avesta into Greek, 90 


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